Truth

I haven’t blogged for a long time.   I have had an issue with trying to make my life seem neat and tidier than it really is. No one really wants to hear the bad stuff right? Well my life is filled with beautiful wonderful things, but there are also a few black holes.  I figure that no one really checks this anymore, and writing has always been a good outlet for me.  There are those things that are too dark for anyone to read, and those will remain in a book I hope to never open and read again. I thought it important for anyone who struggles; sometimes day to day, other times more like month to month, or my children when they are grown, to know that the hard things in life are a day by day journey.  Things don’t magically change overnight in most cases.  The best lessons learned in life our earned through blood and tears and a coming to the Savior.  A good friend recently told me that the hardest paths in life are usually walked by you and the Savior alone.  I am finding that to be true.  Not because no one wants to be there withyou, but because ultimately he is the only perfectly trustworthy and unconditionally loving being in our lives.  All others will make mistakes, or say the wrong things.  It is to be expected, we are all human.  It makes me wonder if we don’t go through the gut wrenching trials just to learn this lesson; How to come to him so completely. 

So here is the truth of my life.  I am mom to four amazing children, who I don’t deserve.  I have a wonderful husband, who isn’t perfect.  I have lived through traumas that I had buried so deep in mind that I convinced myself they weren’t there.   Even though I wasn’t aware, it affected my life and decisions greatly. Now as I try to go back and work through it I find myself struggling and coping.  Mostly I cope in unhealthy ways, which has led to anorexia and anxiety.  Now on top of the other struggles I have to worry about nutrition, my heart, the strains the disorder puts on me physically and my family emotionally.  Like so many others there are financial pressures.  Owning your own business, especially these days, is stressful and uncertain.  I struggle to stay positive.  At times it is easier than others, and there are things I can do that help me.  Serving is one. It is easier to help others than yourself sometimes.  Sometimes I hear the answer for me in words that I say to someone else.  Sometimes just getting out and doing something for someone else is enough to allow the spirit back into my heart. I am completely impulsive.  When I feel threatened or vulnerable I tend to act out in impulsive, inappropriate ways and always end up feeling worse.  I look back into my past and see that as a teenager I did this to people that had no idea what I had been through and therefore no understanding of why.  I didn’t even understand why.  I live with the regret that I can never go back and explain, and it makes me wish I had opened up and told someone what had happened.  The grief it would have saved me!

My disorder progressed quickly at a time when I was working with my counselor on the heart of that trauma.  I couldn’t handle it.  I shut down.  The disorder works well for that.  When you don’t have enough food your brain doesn’t function and you don’t have to think.  I would risk death for that. Now I am at a point in my recovery where it is time to go back and finish that work.  Just starting on it makes me want to turn back to the disorder.  I feel like sometimes I am scrambling for anything to numb me to the pain.  I know if I was better at approaching things, of applying the atonement, it probably wouldn’t be so hard. The fact is I’m not good at allowing anything that would give me any kind of value as a daughter of god to help me.  The feelings of unworthiness are so strong and no matter how much someone tries to convince me otherwise, or how much sense it might make, I don’t feel worthy of it.  I have spent too many years paying attention to my feelings and acting on them. When you feel scared, unlovable, and vulnerable that isn’t such a good thing to base decisions on.   I am told that the progress I have made recently will help me through the trauma this time.  I hope so, because just the thought of some of those dark things drain all energy from me and I can feel myself check out. 

So I have decided to document my feelings while working through this, the heartaches, the pain, but also the miracles and blessings that seem to accompany anything hard that I have worked through.  I have heard others success stories, but I wish I had a more day by day account of how they did it.  Some things I know will be too dark to write about, some too spiritual to share.  I know I am opening myself up to criticism and judgment.