Wishing I Could Say

All the things I wish I could say, to get feedback, support and care. But I can't because there are too many real-life people who wouldn't understand, who would think wrongly of me or misunderstand my meaning. So instead I speak in vagueness and generality, knowing that vaguenesses and generalities will also make my words more fitting for others.

I hate being bitter and angry because it makes my spirit feel so unbalanced and dirty. I try so hard to operate my life from a place of grace and forgiveness...because anything else takes so much more effort. But I won't deny that sometimes the bitterness surfaces and I can't fight it off and I can't drown it except in feeling sorry for myself and the tears that go with it. 

Sometimes life dishes to us things that are unfair...and sometimes we just have to swallow it and say "Thank  you", because to do anything else would kill us.  To really measure, face and own how difficult the circumstances are would pull life away from us in such vast quantities and so quickly that we might find ourselves an ember before we realize what had happened. As well, as long as we are feeling, we are still alive. The alternative is death.

And then we feel guilt and frustration that so many children are starving and so many parents are watching their children die. And then we feel the deepest misery that is the realization that we are so selfish and self-focused that we complain about the things we do when we have food, a home, health. 

But those unfair things, well, if we try to deny the reality that those, however small, things hurt us, make us angry, bitter, and miserable, we are in denial of self that only serves to detract from anything good and lovely in life. To wallow is not the same as to admit, accept, or own -- so not wallow, but own. Sometimes we have to admit that things suck, that we have to deal with it because it's what's been dealt and it's not fair. We don't deserve it, we shouldn't be here, but we are and there is no way to resolve it. So we move forward the only way we know how, one step, one tear at a time.

Sometimes just to say it aloud makes it feel less of a burden, gives us a new measure of grace and peace. Sometimes we have to choose to accept that even if we can't save all the dying children in the world, our feelings are still valid. 

But it still sucks.

Please don't worry for me, because the things that I carry tonight are nothing more than anything any of you carry. Please remember that this place here is my place to have a voice, to unravel and to express so that I might find clarity, or at least calm. Right now my spirit is off-kilter because I have chosen to allow myself to be angry and bitter -- to truly engage the feelings face-forward, to express them in all their ugly unrighteousness. But having written, I feel the alignment returning.