Monday, January 7, 2013

Shame and the Me Inside

Come to find out, there's still a me that thinks "If people knew . . . "

The road I took wasn't without serious muddy pits along the way.  And, funnily enough, not all of them  are ones I would wish away.  Some of those mud baths left me far more beautiful.  And some of them still suck at my ankles and make me feel like I am less than the person I portray.

And that makes it hard to tell my story.  And holds me back.  Because I'm not ready yet to say that every step that helped me get here was good.  Some of it feels too ugly for that.  Even when I love deeply the people who were there with me.  Even when I love the beauty it brought into my life.

I am not that person now, and it's hard for me to wrap my arms around the woman who did the very best she could at the time and tell her that it was enough and she's enough.

I have to do that though.   I have to be proud of all of me.  I have to love myself like I would love anyone else.  

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Don't Talk To Me



Don't talk to me

If you haven't asked me

about my story


Don't talk to me about coming back to God

If you haven't listened

While I tell you

About the nights I cried and begged Him

And knowing.

If you don't know I dropped my daughter off at school to

Cross the street to the church and sit in front of the cross on my knees

And ask and cry and promise and wait

Five days a week.


Don't talk to me about restoring my marriage

If you haven't listened to my voice break

When I said I would love him more the day we divorced

Than the day we married

If you don't know about the night he said the words because I couldn't

And I sat on his lap and cried and cried.

If we didn't feel your arms around us as we stood in front of the judge

Ok.  And proud of the way we were doing things

You have no clue.


I wish you wouldn't pray for me

If you never held my hand and prayed with me

If you didn't hold me while I shook,

If you didn't watch me meet god.


If you don't know, if you never asked,

What it was like to wake up brokenhearted to be alive the morning after I overdosed

On your lies.  The morning after I chewed and swallowed the words

That said she would be better off without me

And washed them down with the poison in the way you smile

Knowing everything.

If you didn't sit in the ER with her that night

Or wait at home with him


You are not my father or my mother or my friend.

You don't belong in this beautiful creation I call life

This crazy, wonderful, hard, incredible thing I embrace, naked, with all my heart

If you haven't asked.  If you haven't listened.


I have a story to tell.

I went there.  And I came back, we all do,

With a story.  It's bigger than you imagine.


Don't talk to me.

If the only story you've heard is yours.

If you haven't asked and you don't listen.