old words, hard things
I am trying to be more vulnerable, trying to share more. It's hard...even when you know that no one is watching.
I wrote this post three-ish years ago. I wanted to share it but I couldn't. Sometimes words cut deep and sometimes they're just too real and too harsh to share right away.
A lot has changed since I wrote this: I've moved, I've changed jobs, I've healed and grown. Yet, these words still sting. I can still feel their intensity - so much so that it scares me.
But here's to sharing the hard things. Here's to feeling the hard things, too.
There is a knock on my door, feet shuffling outside. Boots banging off snow and ice.
My heater rages. The tractor runs outside because this is my life: surrounded by noise. Stifled by scurry.
Never alone and yet always alone. When you live where you work and work where you live, there is no life apart from work and no work more difficult than life.
And my boss is a good man, a good friend. He cares about me so much and that’s all I can feel as I bite my lip and blink back tears because I refuse to let him know how bad it really is.
“I just don’t want to you get discouraged…”
I see the pain in his eyes because he has been there and felt the sting, the deep, grinding pain sliding through your live like a carving knife. He wrestles with himself to try to cover the scars.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that it’s much worse than discouraged. That discouraged was eleven months. This month, this season is called depression.
I am not discouraged. I am breaking, broken, in a million pieces on the kitchen floor.
Our eyes dart to all corners of the room. We are both hurting too much to share.
“I can see how it’s affecting you.”
I’m shaking off his attempts to talk deep. I am shrugging my shoulders and crossing my arms and
muttering, “I know.” I sound like the people that I hate.
If only there could be truth. If only I could bleed out all of this misery that I’ve been trapping inside. If only I could uncork this always-bubbling chaos inside of me.
If only what I wanted to say wouldn’t send him reeling, wouldn’t level him to the place where I am.
If only it wouldn’t leave him breaking, broken, in a million pieces on the kitchen floor.
Because I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore.
I am ready for change and I am waiting on what that means.