The door creaks open to my bedroom door. There is an outline of a silhouette. A shadow stands in my doorway. My body convulses and I start to scream. I wail out three long piercing shrieks. Three loud screams of terror not realizing the person standing in front of me is just my partner trying to get in bed beside me. He places one hand on my stomach and says calmly, “It’s just me, love.” His head sinks into the left side of my shoulder, gently resting his head full of locs in the crevice of my collar bone. He takes a deep and long sigh, wondering how his presence caused me to scream so loudly, in such horror as if I was under siege, under attack and in a war with someone other than myself.
I try to laugh it off. I try to coax him and say it doesn’t happen as often as I secretly know it does. I’ve tried to hide for years that I hate being left alone in the dark. Afraid of the one man who haunted me when I was in first grade. The man my mother rushed to marry. The man that would sneak into my bedroom, sit quietly on my bed, watch me sleep with intoxicated eyes, the look of the devil, and wake me with such horror. I would hide in the closet most nights. I often found myself layering mounds of comforters, sheets and blankets for protection. I routinely slept with a lamp on as if the light would shield me. These are the years I seek not to remember. But somehow they found their way back into my bedroom. I wail so loudly, terror pulsing in my veins, my breathing heavy, full of weight and fear.
I tell him all of this. I do not let him see the tears streaming down my face.
I do let him hold me.
I do let the secrets escape and greet the air to land inside his ear and transform into the truth.
I have visited last Tuesday every day since it happened. We laugh about it over Texas margaritas at a dimly lit table in East Atlanta Village on Saturday afternoon. Somehow the laughter still doesn’t shake how scared we both are and were in the moment. It’s like all the layers of my carefully crafted shield are beginning to break, bend, and split in two.
While I can’t make sense of the terror that seized me and took hold of me for the past ten days and maybe it will be years before I untangle my relationship with darkness, trauma and fear. I look at this moment as an indication of my current mental state and being.
I am sitting in fear.
I am resisting change. Feelings of inadequacy and an inability to overcome present obstacles. When you sit in fear too long, your body remembers and traces everything that you used to be afraid of. It’s like all your fear returns just to suck you in and hold you stagnant.
I am in a season of discomfort.
Things are changing. I am moving in a direction of newness. While I know that nothing good comes from sitting in comfort for too long, this season requires me to leave everything behind and start over. It is necessary.
I attempted this once before. A preempted move across the country for a job in Seattle. A job I ended up hating. A city I ended up not loving. A community I did not belong to. That overwhelming feeling of making a bad choice and returning home was triumphant and rewarding because the old me would have stayed and fought it out. The “moving on” that is required of me at this moment is one that involves stripping myself of every title I’ve ever owned, every job I ever took and forcing me to build an identity that is completely new to me.
I am moving on and becoming a person that I no longer recognize.
I don’t know who she is or how she spends her days. I don’t know how she is growing and what she is evolving to enjoy in her quiet time. I don’t have the roadmap for where she'll end up.
This frightens me. This also invigorates me.
This dichotomy of fear and hope are frequent visitors in my mind most days. I straddle between feeling confident and secure and feeling overwhelmed and defeated. A good friend reminded me that this point of tension is a great place to be. This is where faith kicks in.
I am leaning on faith. Without faith, hope is absent and trust is fleeting. With faith, opportunity can greet and meet you in unexpected moments. Faith keeps your heart steeped in gratitude for the little joys, God’s gifts, to steer you on the right path. Faith reminds us that everything, even the bad, is working for the greater good.
I am moving on and welcoming a transition to write the next best chapter of my life. While fear greets me every so often, I am not letting it define my future. I am holding on to faith and inviting it into darkness, knowing that sitting with both will unlock answers and direction that I need to move on.
I am moving on.
Listen - The Internet - It Gets Better (with Time)
Incredible. Thanks for sharing such a vulnerable story this morning. I’m eager to follow along and see how you’ll take the pen out of fear’s fingers and write a different narrative about your future!