The Tired Behind My Eyes

How often I apologize for my words, and yet, at times, they are the only things that calm my own heart.  I feel a bitter churning in my stomach tonight. My head wants to tell me that it is because of the large glass of tangy homemade lemonade that I drank, but my heart knows better. But then again, who can trust their own heart to tell them the honest truth? I know I can't. I find myself trusting my heart time and time again, only to have it lead me down the wrong path, and how it makes me ache. My eyes feel tight and hot and dry, my hands swollen, and veins bulged. My back aches and I long for sleep and yet it evades me. Once again my mere feelings are poured out upon white sheets of paper and spelled out for hearts to see. I lie here in my bed and I feel so used. By friends who I thought were real, by the very people who are supposed to protect me, and even by my self. It's moments like these that I find living so excruciatingly hard, and I hate myself for it. I hate this weakness of a caring heart; I hate that the very things that give me life only kill me in the end.

But what truly matters?

In the end, all you'll have is God. I know that deep inside those words beat true, and yet my heart tries to resist the thought and the strange emotion that stirs inside my chest when I think of them. I want to cling to this earthy life and all that it offers, the many things that grace my arms and walls, all my dreams that consist of only these familiar rocks and dirt--and yet I know deep down that none of these will last when I close my eyes in eternal sleep. I'll wake to see my knees upon the floor of heaven, standing before the One Who was the orchestrator of all my life, and Who I more often than not pretended wasn't there. Will I be able to lift my chin, and my eyes to that face that no man can see and live? Or will I only be able to tremble and praise my God for granting me life when all I have ever deserved is death? The soft melody beating inside my heart tells me that I was made for God, and yet when following God tells me that what I want to do I shouldn't, I turn my head away like I'm not denying the deepest part of myself when I walk away from Him. My soul and heart and mind and dreams were all crafted by the One who sits upon that throne, and when I deny Him, am I not denying myself also? Denying all that I truly am, denying all that I want and strive to be? I can never achieve the best of myself when I deny myself the sweetest romance any human being can ever experience. And why? Because I do not want to condition my soul and tell myself no to things that, deep down, I know will only hurt me in the end? Why do I seek to major in my own destruction?
I try to make it so much more than simply coming to His throne. I try to make it a list of do's and don'ts when it was never meant to be that way. My God desires my heart, my allegiance--He desires to be my truest friend, and to teach me how to truly live, and not just this life, but the next. The next being the one what truly matters. How often I forget and cleave to that which will only dissolve in my arms. How can those things be so precious that I gain the whole word and yet lose the deepest, most inward part of myself--my very soul? My eyes are trained upon the ground I walk on, when instead I need to reach out and take the hand of the One who already knows the path and let His feet guide me. How often I leave the One that loves me more than all the other souls of the world put together. How often I forget that all I truly have is God.

Pressed Flowers

I don't understand this sickening sadness that descends upon my heart so often anymore. I know life can't be as bad as it seems, but still here I am believing that it is not worth living. I know I'm not the only one who has had pain and spoiled dreams, and yet, I feel all alone in my sadness, and no one but myself can bear those burdensome memories. Only God knows what churns deep inside my heart, and though I wish to spill all my emotions, I know that vulnerability has a habit of breeding fear and dependence. And I do not want either. How is it that in one breath I can be okay and in the next I feel as if a knife was plunged between my ribs. I wish to wake up and realize that I have something amazing to live for. I had something that made my eyes sparkle once, but now I hardly believe that they ever did--or that they ever can again.
I hold it all inside and I let no one see. Words are so unbelievable to so many people that I can spill my heart with no one ever taking me seriously. It's a protection--and yet it hurts, for though they are but words scrawled upon a sheet of paper, they last forever. Thoughts, never written, only last as long as the memory of the thinker. Words, never taken down, only last as long as the hearers remember. Of course, my simple written words are just as easily destroyed, but yet, to me, they seem more tangible. They are like driving a stake into the ground and saying these are my emotions preserved like pressed flowers, and somehow it clears away the fog and makes me see clearly again. For my lips will never speak that which my fingertips pour out. Though my lips pour out laughter, my fingers scrawl pain; I am neither one, nor the other, but a strange undrinkable mixture of both. And my soul feels like nothing more than a tune of the violin passionately but mournfully played.