The hardest truths are the ones we try to hide the deepest, the ones we try to tell ourselves don't exist, that we are over them, that we have grown and changed and moved past...
Until someone who loves you takes them out of your hiding place, shows them to you, and tells you to face them. Not for anyone else...for yourself.
I am admitting to denial.
I lost my ability to believe in anything a very long time ago...and like a child who touched a hot stove once and was forever wary, belief and I have not been anywhere near close to each other for years.
It started with a conversation about normalcy...and peace. Which led to the realization that both of those have been elusive in my life...and the doing is my own. To have either, you have to make the leap, to choose to believe in something. To have faith the size of the mustard seed...that you can smile, and laugh, and love, and fly even with that little bit of faith.
I tell myself I am a woman of faith.
I am a liar.
I believe only to the point that I know disappointment is coming. That somewhere, someone is lying, cheating, speaking badly about me because in the end, everyone does. No one is exempt from this. I am not exempt from this.
I will sit for days and wonder where this emptiness is coming from, too scared to admit that it is not from without...I am growing it within my womb, nuzzling it to my bosom, holding onto it for dear life...
I'm crying now not because I'm sad, but because I'm done.
I want to believe. I wake up every morning hoping today will be the day my faith returns...even if its that the sun will rise again the next day. That I have the strength to believe even that much.
Because I want it. The peace. The steadfastness. I want to enjoy the love that faith allows. I want to be the love that draws strength and is strength. I want to be the light.
There are things I know, and things I tell myself I know. And the worse decisions I've ever made were when I didn't listen to my damn common sense. When I didn't trust myself, I let myself love the wrong man. Ten years later, as I watched myself beg, crying on the floor, for that man to not leave...I knew. My faith was broken.
It was like when my son died and I could no longer sing. There was no reason for it - it was just that my faith was gone. All dried up and it took my voice with it. When my husband confessed and I could no longer pray. When I realized today that I have been going through the motions of living...because the part of me that made me beautiful was gone.
I'm tired tonight. I'm tired of being too scared to believe. I've looked into the eyes of the man I love and called him a liar for what I've seen there. And it makes me cry because my life bitterness overpowered his honesty.
There may be no "do-overs" in life, but there sure as hell are "do-differentlys". I'm starting with that. Baby steps. A mustard seed is small as heck, so I'm thinking it's doable.
Faith-Love-and God. Slowly but surely I will get back there...
...and he will be waiting.
-Asha
(sung by Mariah Carey)
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