The Nothing

It was hard to get up this morning...only partly because of fatigue, at least physical. My endurance for wearing the sunshine mask has diminished through lack of use. I do not know whether that is a good or bad thing. It becomes harder and harder to become that person who my in-laws have fallen in love with, the person who was once Squishy's best friend.

A lot of interest is hard to feign when my only interest is to curl into a ball and stare blankly at the wall. I wasn't joking the other day when I listed getting up and taking a shower as my accomplishments for the day. Because they were. Anything else...is going above and beyond what I feel capable of doing. A while back Dr. Meyer told me that he thought depressed people has more faith because it took more effort just to get out of bed in the morning. I didn't understand him completely then, because I had never got this far down before. But now I know that maybe he was right. I don't know about the faith part, but the effort part was true.

It becomes harder and harder to respond to my lover's declarations and actions of love. I know that he loves me, and yet I feel...nothing. I feel nothing. I am empty, and yet I am filled with darkness. I am void of emotion and yet overflowing with pain and despair. There is no hope in the darkness, save God, and his light is so dim I cannot see it, though I trust, with what little faith I have, that it is there. I trust because I must. Without that, there is no hope, no trust, no chance of light. There is nothing.

Where are the Tears?

I was reading last night, a lot of old things - emails, journals, poetry. And they put such a sharp focus on my pain, which is what I intended. That sounds bad, but this is why: most of yesterday I was floating around in this general well of pain...not being able to pinpoint it, just knowing that that it hurt. There was nothing I could do to ease, save the blade, and I didn't want to turn to that. So looking back at things that spoke of specific hurts, specific pains, was my way of pinpointing something so that I could at least let the tears come...or so I thought.

Because the tears won't come. Even now. They want to, and sometimes one or two slips out, but the sobs, the violent tears that would help to cleanse out some pain...they are no longer to be found. Not even last time I cut...I wanted the tears to fall, as they have so often, but I couldn't. And I wanted this to be long, I wanted to go on and on about tears, and wonder where they are, and wish that they would return, but I find that I can't. I guess today, words, like tears, are in short supply.

It Speaks!

Today my counselor showed me a portion of the Scripture that, for the first time in a long time (or ever?) actually spoke to me. It was Psalm 88, in the version known as "The Message." Probably not a translation/paraphrase I would normally recommend, but in this instance...it speaks!

God, you're my last chance of the day. I spend the night on my knees before you. Put me on your salvation agenda; take notes on the trouble I'm in. I've had my fill of trouble; I'm camped on the edge of hell. I'm written off as a lost cause, one more statistic, a hopeless case. Abandoned as already dead, one more body in a stack of corpses, and not so much as a gravestone - I'm a black hole in oblivion. You've dropped me into a bottomless pit, sunk me into a pitch-black abyss. I'm battered senseless by your rage, relentlessly pounded by your waves of anger. You turned my friends against me, made me horrible to them. I'm caught in a maze and I can't find my way out, blinded by tears of pain and frustration.

I call to you, God, all day I call. I wring my hands, I plead for help. Are the dead a live audience for your miracles? Do ghosts ever join the choirs that praise you? Does your love make any difference in a graveyard? Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of hell? Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark, your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory?

I'm standing my ground, God, shouting for help, at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak. Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear? Why do you make yourself scarce? For as long as I remember I've been hurting; I've taken the worst you can hand out, and I've had it. Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life; I'm bleeding, black-and-blue. You've attacked me fiercely from every side, raining down blows till I'm nearly dead. You made lover and neighbor alike dump me; the only friend I have left is Darkness.

I could have written this psalm. I could write it every day. And there is no resolution, no "Oh look, God made it all better, just because you asked him nicely." There is barely even any hope. But what I see, is that even when the words are accusatory, even when I'm practically yelling at God, even when I don't really think it will do any good...in all those times, he still desires to hear from me. And perhaps, in the act of crying for help, I will find hope that it will come.