Back in May I talked about how we shouldn’t let ourselves forget to love. A couple days later, I pulled the blog. Shut it down. Deleted links. Blacked out the pages. For 6 months I allowed myself to forget. I was hurting and angry and felt as though I had lost all control. So I took it out on my writing. I killed the blog. I killed something that hadn’t even had the time to really grow. Several friends had told me they looked forward to my postings and that they loved my writing but I didn’t allow myself to hear any of that. I was in a really dark place and I thought, “Nobody cares what I have to say so why even bother saying it?” I convinced myself that my voice didn’t matter, that my writing didn’t matter. I was scared. In a weird way, I was scared that it actually did matter. Oh, how confusing. My fear was telling me two different things and in both instances it drove me to give up blogging.
What’s interesting though is that I didn’t actually give it up. I just found other outlets. Every day I would open a blank word document and just start typing. I did several updated on my mom’s CaringBridge site. I sat in numerous coffee shops around town just watching people and then writing for hours on end. During this time I accomplished a significant amount of writing on my “novel”; not that anyone will ever actually see the thing though. I sketched out entire stories, screenplays, even poems, and then I deleted them or wadded them up and threw them in the trash. I regret that now. I have a feeling I wrote a lot of really great things during those months. Sometimes it’s in our darkest moments when we say the things that inevitably inspire change in people. You see the world differently and the world sees you differently, at least that’s what you think. You know, while you’re in that place.
So I stopped writing but not really. See that’s my thing. I write. I write what I can’t say. I write what I know I shouldn’t feel. I write about life. The sometimes messy and depressing and frustrating thing we call life and when I step back and read what I’ve written, the majority of the time all I can do is wonder how I ended up here. How did I get so jaded? What happened to the little girl who dreamed of being a Disney Princess? The little girl who would begin singing for no apparent reason, the little girl who spent hours making people laugh just being herself…that happy little girl I see on our home videos. Where is she?
There are nights, as I make my way down the highway from work to my apartment, that I find myself crying. Most of the time I’m not really sure why? But other times I know it’s because I miss that little girl. I miss the life she represents and I miss the time when life had no worries other than who got to play the babysitter in the game of house. I cry because on most days, I can’t find her. But on occasion, though lately rare, I feel her. She comes back and in those moments I find myself writing about the beauty in life. The little things, like a stranger’s smile, a long run on beautiful Saturday morning, spending the weekend with a best friend; someone who knows the core of who you are, the good news from the Doctor that the treatment seems to be working…and it’s in these “little things” that I see the hope in this life. A hope that our fallen world is actually a pretty decent place and full of wonderful things. That’s who the little girl I left behind in Charlotte, North Carolina wants me to be.
It was late Thursday night when this all came to me. I couldn’t sleep, which is pretty common for me these days. I was sitting on my couch watching TV when I thought, “What are you doing Sarah? What are you doing with your life?” Now don’t get me wrong, I feel very blessed to be where I am. I have an amazing family, wonderful friends, my own place, and a job I love and feel like I’m really good at. But something is missing. Something is not completely there. I’m not sure exactly what that something is but it’s about time I found it…or at least opened myself up to being found.
Most days are tough for me. I’m sad a lot…even when everyone around me is happy. Which is weird. You’d think that being surrounded by happy people would make you happy. For me, that’s not the case. I wish that wasn’t true. But it is. At least for now. I know that this too shall pass. That I will look back and shake my head and say, “Oh Sarah, you were quite the little drama queen weren’t you.” At least I hope I will. But until then I’ll write. Because I truly believe that the world opens up when you write.
As I open my blog once more I hesitate, yet I do it anyway. For it is the fear that will keep us from achieving our goals. The fear that keeps us from finding happiness. It is the fear that keeps us from being who God intended us to be. And it is the fear that inevitably keeps us from love. So I say be gone fear because you’re not welcome here anymore.
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