a soldier, a bird

I was accused last night of being unstable. And crazy me, I didn't even get what that meant until this morning.

I screwed up yesterday. Big time. I acted like a sixteen year old all over again. I don't really know why this happens to me. I mean, sometimes I wish I could just grow up already and be done with all my adolescent insecurities.

It seems to only happen when I'm feeling ignored, neglected, or abandoned. I become some overly emotional freak who thinks it's all my fault for causing every ounce of misery in my life. I become a person who needs a thousand reassurances that it's all okay and that I'm not a horrible person after all. I hate when I get like that. And what I hate even more is that every time I'm like that, I feel like it's the real me that I've always been.

Last night and this morning, I felt totally exposed and totally vulnerable and totally stupid. I just wanted to crawl out of my own skin and be a normal person already. A non-needy, self-assured, confident person.

"I need you to be strong" he said. I hardly know what that means. When I think of strong, I think of fake. Hiding true feelings, putting on a happy face, keeping a stiff upper lip. I'm raw all the time. I'm an open book even when I shouldn't be. I grew up in Southern California and I developed a severe distaste for falsity. That's why I clung onto grunge music, I think. It was raw and it was real and it was very emotional, just like me. The best compliment I ever got in my life was, "You're the only REAL person I know." That meant a lot to me.

But I think that realness doesn't have to mean rawness. I think now that it mostly means sincerity. And I think that strength doesn't have to mean falsity. I think now that it mostly means prudence. I will have to work on prudence.

The Lord told me in prayer the other night that I would have to learn to be a soldier, that I wouldn't be able to show all my woundedness anymore. He said I would have to be more like a bird, feigning health till the bitter end. Not because I'm in denial of the truth, but rather because the enemy will snatch at any weakness.

I'm not saying everyone out there is my enemy or that any particular person is my enemy. But I cannot afford to be so self-pitying anymore. Really, it's quite pathetic. I was hating myself in the midst of it all. I was raging at God and the saints and complaining about how I'm so sick of sacrificing and I thought, "What in the world am I thinking? What am I doing? What am I saying? I live a good easy comfortable life. I am sobbing out my troubles to people who lost loved ones and endured whippings and suffered trial after trial after trial. I am PATHETIC. Somebody shut me up already." So I put away my last Kleenex and stopped sobbing and wiped away the tears. I said I was sorry and I got up and I moved on.

I don't want to be pathetic anymore. I don't want to be needy anymore. And for Heaven's sake, I will slap myself if I have to hear myself saying one more time something along the lines of, "I just want to know that you really do care about me." No one person can give me all the truckloads of reassurance that I seem to need in those moments. I have to get it from within myself. I have to just be okay with myself no matter what other people think. As long as I'm doing my best, and acting prudently, that should be enough. That will be enough.

So I thank my friend for slapping me in the face with the truth about myself last night. And I thank him for asking me to be strong. It will be a new thing for me, uncomfortable at first, I'm sure. But I will do it. I will.