Is there something right with me that can compensate for my weaknesses? I love my kids. I might not have always been the best mother, but I have always done everything in my power to do right by my kids. My mental illnesses and subsequent breakdown might have taken them away from me for a time, but I’m working really hard at keeping myself stable enough to be there for them now. I can look back upon my past with a lens focused upon my failures, or I can choose to direct my memories toward what I did right. I used to beat myself up continuously for my inability to control them, for my powerlessness, and from my weaknesses, which only increased my feelings of failure. Now, I choose to be deliberate about reminding myself of all the things I did right. I did make the effort to be with them, to care for them, to love them to the best of my capacity, and I still do, and I always will. I talk back to the voice in my head that tries to convince me that I’m not good enough. That voice is a liar, and I refuse to believe her anymore.

What is so wrong with me that I’m not able to accept myself just as I am? Well, I’m not a fun person to hang out with. I get it, and it’s okay, I guess. I don’t have to be the life of the party; I just want to get invited. My ex-husband is the fun parent. He takes the party with him wherever he goes. He’s nearly a decade older than me, and he still runs like the Energizer bunny. It’s so not fair. I’m super jealous. I’ve always been a low-energy person. I have chronic pain, chronic illness, and chronic fatigue. Sometimes, I have an all-out rage at God for making me this way. Sometimes, I sink into depression; and sometimes, I even get suicidal. But I’m still alive, and, to quote the distinguished philosopher Alanis Morissette, “And I’m here, to remind you of the mess you left when you went away. It’s not fair to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me.” I know my life is a mess. I also realize that it’s beyond time for me to come back into my life, clean it up a little, and to quit blaming the people who initially left me and started the whirlwind of messiness in my life in the first place. It might not always be fun but living my life and taking responsibility for what I do with my life today is always worth the price of admission.

*You Oughta Know from Jagged Little Pill (1995)

Okay, what’s next? There has to be another step after the last one. I probably shouldn’t stay on the same path when I don’t like what I see in the distance, but it’s so safe and smooth and familiar. I don’t want to walk out into the weeds. I’m not the type of person who runs off, blazing my own trail. I’m also not afraid of a challenge. I enjoy pushing myself. And I love the rush of accomplishment upon arriving at the viewpoint after a difficult climb. Safety has never been a high priority for me, partly because I tend not to value my own life, but mostly because I believe nothing can harm me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not reckless or anything. And I do get hurt all of the time because I’m uncoordinated and seriously accident prone. But still, we each have our time to go. When it’s our time, it’s our time, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And until it’s our time, it’s not our time, and so we have to keep living one day after the next, one step after another, until it is our time. And it’s not my time, not yet. I’m still here. I’m still breathing. I’m still yearning for a steep, jagged ascent, longing for a change from the mind-numbing level road. Be careful what you wish for, I know, but I need to stay alert. I don’t want to waste a single opportunity. I’m eager to take another step forward.

Is there hope for sanity? If I can come to terms with my past, if I can accept that everything that’s already happened was required to get me to where I am now, if I can accept that where I am now is an essential part of getting me to where I want to go in the future, then I might be able to manage to achieve serenity, and serenity is necessary for sanity. Some people seem to have a few screws loose. My brain is a whole box of loose screws. Actually, my neurological synapses are like a huge blob of tangled Christmas lights. I used to love to spend hours on end untangling Christmas lights. Untangling my brain, however, is a different story. It’s like an old telephone switchboard with all of the chords plugged into the wrong holes. Approaching the task is daunting, to say the least. Without serenity, it’s an impossible task. Serenity is what allows me to make sane decisions regarding what to do next instead of reacting haphazardly in a torrent of swirling emotions, which only makes matters worse. If I want my life to get better, if I want to live with serenity and with sanity, then I need to change a few of the variables in order to get different results.

How am I to learn to love others well? By learning to love myself well. I don’t have a clue where to begin. There’s a serious lack of viable role models in the area of self-love. I certainly saw no examples of love during my childhood. All I witnessed was fear, scarcity, anger, and grief. As an adult, I see insecurity and defensiveness in most other eyes. We’re so scared, and we live in a culture that promotes armor and pretending. At the mature age of seventeen, I wrote a poem with the line: “You’re only one person who plays so many parts, yet not even the greatest obtains multiple hearts.” It’s good to have roles because our relationships differ situationally, but we only have one heart. I need to be of one heart. I need to define who I am in order to love who I am. I don’t need to find myself; I need to be myself. I need to accept the parts of myself that I can’t change. I need to recognize what those parts are and choose to love them as parts of me.

Is there life beyond mere survival? Yes, there is more to life than eating, drinking, and enjoying the work of your hands. In fact, I’ve come to believe that the whole reason we’re even here in the first place is to learn to love each other well. Our brains get programmed poorly during childhood, often with the best of intentions. We learn to fear people who are different from us. We learn to use physical violence, intellectual reasoning, or emotional manipulation to get what we want. We learn to crush the other guy because the only way for us to win is for someone else to fail. We learn to hate the people who don’t follow our rules or conform to our standards. It is easier to live in a world of absolutes, of black and white, of right and wrong. It’s easier, but it’s not more loving. Loving is painful. Loving is costly. Love is giving someone else the larger half of the last cookie. Love is accepting the larger half of the last cookie when it’s offered. Love is giving up the life of our dreams in order to be there for someone else, and love is letting go of a relationship we desire so our beloved can pursue the life of their dreams. Love is a complex paradox. Love is dangerous and alarming. Love is suffering and celebrating in our relationships with others. Love is binding and freedom. Love requires a lifetime to learn to love well. Love empties us, fills us, and flows through us as much as we’re able to allow. Love is not a sentimental, romantic notion. Love is a path of goodness and truth. Love hurts sometimes. Great love can be excruciating. And yet, learning to love well is rich and rewarding because love truly is always the more excellent way.

How do I restore my faith in other people? I don’t. It’s not wise for me to put my faith in other people. Other people are always going to disappoint me, abandon me, reject me, and let me down. What I need to do is to restore faith in myself. I’m going to disappoint myself and let myself down, too, but I won’t abandon myself again. I won’t reject myself anymore. I can learn new tools and practice my skills to take better care of myself. I can love myself. I can be good to myself, and I can believe in myself. Other people are going to love me, be good to me, and believe in me too, but I don’t have any control over when or whether they will. I do have control over when I show up for myself. I can put faith in my ability to choose life and to respond to life to the best of my ability. I don’t want to give anyone else the power over me to make me happy, to give me a sense of belonging, or to grant me the permission to express myself authentically. If I do give them that power, then I’m also giving them the power to deny me. I’m not willing to allow anyone to deny me the privilege of being true to myself anymore. Giving other people that type of control over me breeds fear, not faith.

Which self-destructive patterns learned in childhood are still affecting me now? No one cared about me, so I withdrew. I grew to prefer my own company. I enjoyed lying in the dark shed alone drawing pictures on the ceiling with a flashlight. I had fun playing barbies in our sauna of an attic, composing a pretend world the way I wanted it to be. I loved lining up my stuffed animals on the front porch and “teaching” them; it didn’t matter which subject, but it was usually math. And my idea of playing dress up was drawing “wrinkles” on my face with my mother’s eyebrow pencil, donning sunglasses and a shawl, and pretending to be an old lady hobbling around our front yard. I played solitaire. I colored. I dug in the dirt. I cut up cardboard boxes with our good steak knives, and I danced around the patio with a broom while sweeping. I’d spend an entire day daydreaming whenever it was my turn to clean the bathroom, which was nearly every Saturday since neither of my older sisters ever wanted to get stuck doing it. So, the bathroom never really actually did get clean, but I played in the water and scrubbed the bathtub. I got a sick sense of satisfaction watching the ring of dirty-kid grime peel away from the porcelain beneath the force of my wet rag doused with cleanser. Now, this fierce sense of independent striving prevents me from forming symbiotic relationships. I’ll do whatever I can do myself. Other people just get in the way. It’s not a healthy or productive approach to life, but it’s still habitual. As an introvert, I need to be intentional about making friends and including others at times as well as allowing myself enough alone time to recover. Therefore, I pray for the strength not to allow the fear of being on the receiving end of other people’s hurtful behaviors to control me or for the allure of solitude to draw me into an unhealthy pattern of solitude at the expense of interpersonal relationships.

I got lucky? I survived two near-fatal accidents. I nearly drowned a couple of times. I’ve endured decades of severe depression. I have no idea how I’m still alive; yet here I am. I feel like Lieutenant Dan in the movie Forrest Gump, saved from certain death only to be left crippled and without a leg to stand on. Eventually, he got lucky. The combination of a friend, a boat, and a raging storm restored his ability to feel alive again, to be alive again. I’ve had a series of friendships. I’ve gone through many raging storms. There have even been several boats in my life, and I’m not a boat person. I get seasick much too easily. And yet, I do believe there will come a time when I am able to look God square in the face and say with all sincerity, “Thank you for saving my life.” I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but I have to believe I will be grateful to be alive someday. And when that day comes, I’ll be ready. I’ll walk across the grass with new strength in my stride due to a modern-day miracle, and I’ll possess a new ability to love, laugh, and enjoy my life.

Can I trust my own voice? If I can recognize my own voice. There are too many voices bouncing around in my head. I have a hard time distinguishing one voice from another within the cacophony. I’m so used to the voices telling me how stupid I am, how my opinion is not valued, how my presence is not wanted. I still experience the rejection viscerally regardless of what any particular voice is actually saying. Muscle memory tenses my body. Neurological memory flares, and my immune system goes on the attack, searching mercilessly for foreign invaders. My past is like the agony of a phantom limb. An amputation might prevent the disease from spreading farther into the body, but nothing can stop the brain from continuing to process the embedded pain. I have to fight back. The only other option is to enclose myself within a cocoon of apathy, which results in severe depression, and I’ve already wasted too much time in this self-imposed solitary confinement. So, instead, I talk to myself. I tell myself that it’s all going to be okay. I tell myself that my presence is appreciated and that my contributions are valued. I tell myself. I hear my voice. It’s not enough. There’s too much noise.