Monday, July 9, 2012

Silence and darkness

Alone late at night when sleep won't come, it's then that my mind becomes my enemy. Pondering over the hurts that I carry, it makes my soul weary.
I ache for the loss of friendships. The way they've disappeared, I question if they ever existed. Part of me wishes they'd never been because then there'd be no hole where they once were. "It's better to have loved and lost," may be the saying, but my heart rejects it and denies it as truth.
I know there is bitterness in my soul, I can taste it, like acid rising in my throat. The past returns, but only I am burned.
Sometimes I want to lash out, to pass on the pain, but more often I swallow it down where it burns my core. Mostly I withdraw, where the pain is the greatest, I just trust, like cutting off a limb that bleeds to severely, I just amputate to stop the bleeding and pray healing will come, all the while denying the inevitable sense of being "crippled" that lies ahead. I may learn to operate without the "limb," but it does not mean I will ever recover from what's lost.
So many I tried to invest in who've just forgotten me, or worse redefined what I meant to them. I ache. Maybe it's wrong to look for the "return," but it hurts to believe that nothing I've done has mattered. I wanted nothing in return at the time, and yet now that there really is nothing, no connection, no relationship, no remembrance, I have to question if my motives were ever pure, because it hurts that nothing remains.
I am forgotten at best, or worse, history has been rewritten, and I am now the villain. I may never truly know which is the case which makes the ache all the greater.
I feel very alone. As I lay in the dark and the silence surrounds me, it screams of the loneliness I find myself in. The silence is defeaning, and broken only by the voice inside my own head, one voice that would be better kept truly silent.
But no matter what I might feel, I'm not alone in the silence, in the darkness. The Lord is here, even if I cannot sense Him, even when He too is silent. I imagine, is He sitting quietly in the dark, in a corner? I picture Him there, and I strain to see the look on His face. Disappointment? Disgust? Disconnection? Those are not in His nature, but in His silence, it's where my mind goes. I cannot bring myself to pray. I am accustomed to His silence, but I fear what He might say. So I hide, hoping He will come for me, even though I know His Word says that I am the one who must seek.
But I've lost so much, what if I look, and He is not to be found? What if only the darkness and silence remain? I know He's in it, but sometimes there is no place as lonely as in the presence of one who does not speak, the One who is not speaking.
I long to flee, to forget, surely it is better than feeling forgotten. But it is not to be. So in the darkness and silence I remain, begging for my own voice inside my head to cease, and yet, I do not pray.