And The Rain Pours Down

This afternoon the rain is pouring down outside, and inside too, I feel tears needing to be born....though I'm not at all sure why.  I feel this inner urge to yell, scream, bellow at the top of my lungs.   I want to hit things, not something soft but rather a wall or the ground, pounding it with my fist.

I want to run with the storm, race the lightning.... my hair whipped by the wind,  my bare feet splashing through rain puddles, my toes digging into the mud, the earth until I cannot move another inch and collapse into a heap on the rain soaked ground.   I want the thunder to roll over me, through me, I want to open my mouth wide and birth that window shaking sound, that crack of thunder that feels like it could tear apart mountains.

Sometimes, the words that say what I'm going through and where I am in my healing don't  feel big enough, or clear enough or loud enough.  Flashbacks.  Night Terrors. Kinesthetic Body Memories.  My weekend, was filled to overflowing with all three.   I felt as though I were drowning... as though I had somehow after ten years of fighting to heal, been dropped back in time to the first few months of PTSD.

I'm tired....exhausted and soul-deep weary.   I can't fathom processing another memory, dealing with another body memory or fighting for peaceful sleep.

And yet....

This place, just here.....I know too, and I know it will ease and I will feel strong again.  But, just now?  I am filled to overflowing with sorrow, and the tears are coming and finding their way down my face one at a time.

There is this enormous hill ahead of me, almost a mountain, and it holds the most treacherous and difficult part of my healing journey.  It holds the darkest memories and the hardest pieces of my history to acknowledge and accept and I want to run, run like the wind, though I know the only way out is through.  Up and over that mountain is the only way to the light I seek, the light I know is beckoning me to come, urging me up and over and into it's arms.

I wasn't going to post today.  My instinct to only put here what is inspiring and light filled, only what may help someone reading it to take the next step, or be able to be present and in the moment and know they aren't alone.     But, sometimes, it's good to just know you aren't alone....to know that there's another soul out there fighting depression, or yearning to scream or beyond exhausted and THAT can be the inspiration.

And so here I am.

My words tumbled out of my heart and soul and mind, not perfect, but messy and authentic and true and here on this page.   This is one of those hard moments on the healing path that is horrendously steep and rocky and I keep tripping and falling and yearning to just sit it out for awhile.  Instead I keep picking my battered and bruised and bloody self up and stumbling forward and into the next moment, hoping, praying that it will be easier, softer, more light filled around the bend in the road just ahead.

I remember once, speaking with someone I looked up to growing up, and a moment when he smiled at me, and pointing at the cloudy skies above us one evening, he said: "You know, just because the clouds prevent us from seeing them, doesn't mean that the moon and stars aren't there."

So, today I hold him to that.   I feel cloudy and my skies feel dark and ominous and I cannot see the stars or moon....but I do know they are there... and I do know the light is there too... I just can't see it right now.   Perhaps I will see it tomorrow, or in the next moment, or the moment after that.  For today, that knowledge will be enough.

I  thank each of you for surviving, for continuing to heal, for the light you shed in the world, for the light you shed on my path, on all our paths.  May you have a blessed and beautiful evening.