The house I have never known, just like the man sitting inside of it. My heart cried as I drove on by, I began to wonder if I had the right address. I stopped to confirm and as I turned around I knew. There was a certainty that came over me. I sat in the stillness, alone with my thoughts while they raced through my brain. Where were the memories of long ago? A connection, a sign that says “welcome, come on in”. What was I hoping to see, to find, to happen? I didn’t have the answers other than I am still that little girl chasing after you and waiting, hoping to be found.
A tear streamed down one cheek as another fell right behind it. I may not have understood what I was doing, but I do know what I felt. Another reminder I continually search and long for a place where I belong. To seek comfort and rest, to finally call some place home.
I wanted to scream as my insides dictated the remorse and sadness, “for a lifetime now, I have felt so fucked up because of your desertion!” But instead I sat there and stared at an unfamiliar little compound and wondered what I might behold behind that fence of steel, locked gate and closed-door. Warmth, safety, peace and joy? Did it really matter? I sat and lingered a few minutes more contemplating, but these hands wouldn’t open the door to the wall that it put up long ago. In that instant as the tears subsided, a hurt little girl wanted you to feel just an ounce of the pain that has inflicted me my whole life. That has misdirected my choices and pushed me to settle for things I believe I am only merely deserving of in this life.
As I allowed my thoughts to wander for what felt like sort of an eternity, the fantasy erected in my head. A version of life which I had been longing for. As the images washed over me like the fresh falling rain coming down, a loud honk from behind jolted me back into my current reality. There I sat, quietly in my car, imagining you peacefully in your chair, while I face the truth once more.
For once in my life, I desperately wanted you to hug me, to take away this heavy burden of shame I carry on my shoulders, to hear you tell me it’s not my fault, I love you and never meant to hurt you. More than anything I want to stop blaming you for who I am today because I know my character was built on it, but it doesn’t have to continue to define me. I need a sense of normalcy in my life, to stop behaving like that wounded, abandoned little girl more often than not. To stop believing there is something so fundamentally wrong with me that I constantly sabotage my own happiness. Please change my thinking so I can move past this and be free of self-doubt and replace it with self-confidence, that you never instilled in me.(blame and shame)
Instead I write my heart out and sometimes I cry in frustration. The little girl inside gets scared when she’s all alone or left straggling behind. Then she copes with her broken tools gathered over the years in hopes to rise above the deep-seated anger that surfaces at the most inopportune times. These are the unpleasantries that reveal the depths of my brokenness even I don’t like to see, nor show.
No longer do they serve this grown up lady I so desperately want to be. I pray God to bind them up and heal me whole for the woman buried deep inside of me.
I drove by your house today…
maybe next time I’ll find the courage to stop…
suchagirl2 