Here We Go Again

I am back to where I always start: deception, heartache, loneliness, abandonment, rejection, insecurity, and worst of all emptiness. They’re all old friends of mine. So much so I’ve learned to embrace them in the past, we lived well together for many years, but I’ve been so busy building and keeping occupied that they were dormant, and in all honesty I have missed them. Is that wrong to confess? “But Sharon, these things aren’t things to be missed.” Trust me, I know. But if we’re going to be honest, we have to be brutally honest. Here it is: I am comfortable with pain, I seek it out. I am familiar with emptiness and in the emptiness I at least feel deeply enough to know I am alive. It’s been worse before, because I used to willingly choose situations and people that were hurting me because if only for a brief moment, they were at least choosing me. Surely for the wrong reasons, lust, desire, possession...and that is what I have molded love to be. To be loved is to be desired. So promiscuity, provocation, lust, abuse...this was love to me. I was willing to live with this so long as someone stayed. Why couldn’t someone just stay? I have done it all to make someone stay. Overexerted myself and stretched my capacities to be the best, the smartest, the sweetest, the sexiest, the most understanding doormat that you can ever fathom. Good, sweet, quiet little Sharon. Who had to be obedient and useful, and try her hardest to be beautiful and put together. 

But we are here today to begin this journey of redefinement. It actually all started August 13, 2017 on my way back from a trip to Boston, where yet another man managed to reduce me into a speck the entire time I spent there. He wasn’t the first, and surely wasn’t the last because many were to follow after him. It wasn’t until my last day on my way to the airport that I realized I couldn’t live like this anymore so I wrote myself my vows. “I, Sharon, am embarking on a new mission of a remodeled state of mind and remodeled lifestyle. I will solely focus on my King Jesus, myself, and my family. I will invest my time with the people I love, doing things to benefit my mind, my body and spirit. I will invest my energy into my personal growth. And I will invest my money into new experiences. The Bible tells me that I have the capacity to change my mindset, that I am able to renew my thoughts therefore influencing my reactions and habits into better results. I will carefully choose the people I surround myself with, no longer giving pieces of myself to anyone just for the sake of it. I will take care of myself, I will travel, meet new people, I will become a successful architect, I will be a wife, a mother, a better sister, daughter, granddaughter, aunt and friend.” And just like that everything changed…

Yeah right! If only it were that easy. To become aware is only one quarter of the first step. That moment for me was the spark in the midst of my pain and depression and what people don’t really tell you about being depressed is that it takes a whole lot more work than just a spark to wake you up. To come out of that state requires you to wake up every single day, go out into the wilderness of your inner being and fight bears and lions, hunt and gather, rediscover fire to then even begin to try and start a flame and then you wake up the next day like you’re learning everything for the first time again. Over and over and over again. Every day it is back to the beginning. So where was God in all of this? He was at the bottom of the well with me. See, one thing I learned about God in this process is that He doesn’t whip us into shape with a snap of a finger, but He sits with us in our pain in order to comfort us, encourage us and speak life into us with a tender and loving kindness. He doesn’t want to see us in the depths, He never planned for us to go there. But we stray, the human condition without the Spirit is wired to try and find their own way. We seek out what we think are solutions to our problems and sometimes like in my case end up being in a vicious cycle of hurt because I kept going back to the very things that were causing the pain. He has the solutions, but rarely do we stop to listen. So, here I am again. The vows I set out for myself were mostly kept and fulfilled; I traveled, I began to take care of myself, I sought out therapy to deal with past wounds, I began to heal my relationships with my family, I began to be honest about the inner battles I had carried for so many years. I spent an entire year reading every personal growth book I could get my hands on. I began to be mindful of the people I let close to me. I completed my degree in architecture, started my career in a successful firm… but as I write this I see I neglected to vow to my main vice: romantic relationships. I tend to joke and say that men are my drug of choice, and again, to be brutally and shamelessly honest they are. I’ve always been the type to have rosters of men on standby, those that I could reach out to get the high of validation and comfort, the high of being desired. But like every drug out there, this high is temporary and it makes me the monster to use people like this. It is inevitable though that pain causes pain, I was hurt so I would hurt, as Meggie Royer once wrote: “I know better than anyone that I’m more accustomed to holding a knife than holding someone’s hand.” Having your guard up so high comes with the price of being on high alert at all times, it’s being quick and cunning to plot for what you think is your safety. So you end up doing things like cutting someone out of your life before they get the chance to cut you out of yours. This is just one example of the many things that I did thinking I was protecting myself. I find myself here again, after another heartbreak. Reliving that which I am accustomed to, but I know one thing with all of the certainty that I can muster up: I do not want to be here ever again. So we begin again, we seek healing for the hundredth time, but this time we will seek it solely in Christ. And yes, I’ve said this in the past before, but I was quick to take matters into my own hands because it was the easiest thing to do. However, we are taking the harder path this time, we’re digging deeper until we find the root of this cycle and tear it into shreds.

With that all being prefaced, here we are. I am back to the beginning.