Withdrawing From The Troops Of My Own Torment.
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I remember a pastor once said, “The biggest war in life you’ll ever fight is the battle of the mind.”
I subconsciously nodded in agreement, as my body began to get tense from knowing the validity of his statement. He then pointed at me through the crowd of the congregation, and said, “Her… she knows what I am talking about.”
Having never met this visiting pastor, I assumed he read the expression on my face as apparently I wore something on my sleeve to reveal.
There was a point in time, a while after I had suffered a trauma when I felt as if I had been placed into the water, sinking into the truth that I was not free from the processing of events that had laid bricks one by one upon my hands that I would extend out in belief like the spirit of a small child on their birthday, making a wish and then squinting their eyes and fanning away the flame of their candles with the exhale of their breath.
All along I was in shutdown mode as my eyes would shift from one place to another until it would go grey, and then another place until that one dimmed, and then another. There were episodes of light that came in at times.
Maybe it was to remind me that my blood was still flowing through the blocked channels of my spirit, and somehow through the hot burning tears I cried, to show me I still served a purpose.
I was not interested in that, but at the same time I would not let go of my truth that I kept pressing farther down — suffering the consequence of a longer path. Had I known this at the time, it still would not have changed my mind.
I had wrapped chains around my heart so tightly that I ceased to recognize my identity through any lens that would allow me to see that I could truly be free. I heard once that one can sabotage their own healing journey. The thing was, I wanted to be happy… on purpose.
I could not lay my burdens down because I had allowed them to migrate to a well-kept garden of their own, and I could not pluck them out without a valid hint as to where they were.
It’s odd that pain and unresolved conflicts within our hearts know how to fabulously build their own cathedral just as much as the light that comes dashing in when life howls goodness into the spaces of our being.
The darkness can plant a dead church inside us just as much as the light can respond to the pulse of someone in need, opening door after door as the way out of that darkness and into the sanctuary of redemption.
There was a confession that I owed myself, and without fulfilling it, the force of illusion spread harm to the resources I once believed in. I remained quiet, and packed up all my things that I could reach for, even the things I could not see but could feel were still mine by the shattered pieces that pricked my fingers as I grazed through them.
I felt that time occupied the edge of my pillow, but the ghost within me had crouched down to a corner where God never wanted me to be. I could not stand anymore, and maybe that is just where I survived.
My feet had decided to withdraw from the battle, not because they had become weak, but to preserve the hope that had been branded in my life some time ago.
I noticed all the while how going to bed every night had gone from the place I could not wait to be — as I could close my eyes and pull the covers of painful moments over my head and forget everything as I fell asleep — to the place I began to dread, as when things got quiet in my world, that is where they got loud in my mind.
I would lie there and take the beating over and over again until the notion of being rescued had crossed my mind because I tired out from being shackled to the boulders of anxiety that rolled in, crushing all my reasons to define joy.
I became a victim of confusion, a hostage in a nightmare that invented lies I had begun to believe. I could not win the war, I could not leap over the battle, I could not withdraw from the troops of torment held against me.
This is the summary of how trauma had wired itself through the passageways of my life, and through days, months and years, the most dishonorable fence had captured every space in the gallery where the sound of my breath lived.
Although there is a different dimension to every story, and there is so much more to mine… it wasn’t until I learned to be gentle with myself through an opening phenomenon that the Universe began lending me several helping hands to lift me up and out of the miry clay.
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Michelle Sanborn is a devoted self-nurturer. After several years of doing just the opposite, she now enjoys life splendidly and unbroken. She currently lives in the moment, spends as much time as she can being barefoot, and enjoys the cooky behavior of Siamese cats. She has a love for raw honesty, has found that the places of our past are never really lost when they have full nostalgic value, and she dreams of someday having a hot air balloon ride over a very green country. Her recipe for nourishing her introverted ways consists of one-on-one stimulating conversation, a date with her kitchen baking sweet treats on a gloomy day, and with her headphones and beach chair as her only guests, she drinks up solitude at the beach from nine to five. She does not believe in luck, but instead believes in being blessed. Writing is not her occupation, nor does she string the chords of an imaginary instrument to make it be so. The true faculty of her writing would only take the form of absolute serendipity, and that is just what makes her feel alive.
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