Faith

Faith. I started thinking that I could define it to myself, but it has been hard to come to terms with what I believe it means. Not only to myself, though, but to anyone really. You can only really know what your own faith is and what to put down in words. I can say that I have doubted everything I have grown to know since a little girl as if I dreamed it all. What more can be said about the idea that there might still be something bigger than us?

I have grown to believe in natural things did what they needed my source of ‘magic’ and grew up with the love of all things around me. I knew herbs to heal and help. I knew flowers that could make one feel happy by color and smell. I knew the reasons the moon made you feel the ways you did when it was full or new or anywhere in between. I could tell you the significance of a color to my life. I could give you reasons why I believe all that.

But now… I am not sure anymore really. I am stuck. And I do not know why anymore. I do not know why I should believe anything except that I am here. I am here.

I attend church, have a family, a job, and friends. I love to watch TV and read. I listen to a multitude of music from classical to stuff you cannot understand because its grunting guys trying to sing. I laugh at jokes and my children being silly. I can smile at the simple things when they are noticeable. My job is not a complicated one but fulfilling because I see so many different people while there.

The church I attend has a unique way of looking at things and is not a stuffy one. I get what they talk about, but I cannot seem to see myself as one of them. I understand it because of how my life has gone and I can put it into my mind. My heart, on the other hand, is another matter. I feel comfortable to a point because those people are kind and beautiful in their ways. I enjoy the time I spend with them all, but I still cannot shake this feeling of outcast and looked at differently, even in my own family.

I grew up with one parent and my siblings. I grew up in poverty, though I did not know it. I never asked for things even when I needed it. I barely graduated from school because of the things I did have. I admit having an addiction to my computer and the internet growing up but when you go from where I had been to someplace where I ended, what more was there for me? I used drugs and drank daily when I was younger, mostly to fit in, sometimes to get away, and a lot of the time just because it was something to do.

I felt I had friends, but no one close enough to keep after my best friend died. He was everything in my life for the longest time because he was there for me when I felt no one cared. He held me when I had my days of depression and the times, I could not pick myself up from that hole. I would not be here if it were not for him and his family. His mother taught me the Practice and I had my faith there to lead me through life. His brothers were my brothers and family when mine was distant to me.

After he died though, it got tough for me. Everything seemed an unending darkness that was left. I could not go a day without feeling I was not wanted, was not needed, and no one cared if I was gone. I attempted to end it. So many times, I did not care to count and hate to think I tried at all. I suffered from depression and anxiety so bad at times I would black out from my own fear. I would make myself sick from one thought of being alone. I did not know what else there was to live for. Drugs and drinking were all I had to get away from all that.

I fought with my feelings and get caught in situations that made me scared of a simple hug. That guy tore my heart out and ripped my insides out. He made me believe I had to feel like that to be loved by anyone and even to this day I feel that once and awhile. It is hard to let go. I cannot just NOT say no to that. He wounded me and broke me. That man messed with me so much I used that energy to further forget.

I do not really remember from the age of 11 to about 20 because of that, coupled with the substances. And I still felt like I could not turn to family. My dad loved me, and I knew that, even to the end of his time here, despite the fights and him not agreeing with me. I believe… I believe he saved my life by make me move. By not letting me stay there. By loving me. I cannot tell anyone how much it still affects me that he tore me from that life, that old life. He did not know what I had been doing, did not know who was doing what, and what happened when he was not home. I could not tell him and now I cannot. I still love him though. He was my dad.

Once away from all that, the loneliness got worse though. School was worse, with being new and outcaste because they knew I liked girls. I did not date guys here till senior year and because of that they made even more fun at me. I could not get away from it either. I stayed to myself, kept my boundaries close and never let anyone in. I had one friend who got me through even though she did not know either. We all have secrets though. I could have told her everything, but I felt that if I did, she would be like there rest and stop being there.

Anxiety made it difficult to get through a day at school with the teachers not understanding I could not understand. With the other students whispering around me, even if it was not about me, I always thought it was. I had this itch that everyone talked about me, hated me, and never cared to get to know me. I could not get away from it till I got home, got online, played the games, and talked to the people. I became a character then. I became Kali, my lovely vampiric elf-maiden who sought the protection of a fantasy world.

I grew more and more alone with that world as well. I would talk and share and be this woman who would never exist because it was words on a screen. But to me, it was real. Real enough I even was able to write a short story about her. Kali was my happy outlet even when I made her dramatic about things and depressive. In that world online I knew I could not be me. I was safe from even myself.

Kali became Kalyria and soon was an in-depth persona I could identify with daily and when I do not remember what happened on a day, I do remember thinking about her and what I could do as her. I grew so attached that when I finally knew I had to give her up, I cried, I shook, and I made myself sick. I was losing me. I was giving up the one safety for what… my family. My son was born at the end of her time, and I began something else.

I have had experiences with my characters here and there since but nothing that deep. I had my husband to keep me from wandering off to it all. I had my son there to keep me company and alive. I do not think I could have gotten through that time without them. I still have regrets for letting her go, but as the adult I am, can I really have that life still? Can I live with knowing there will be days I will not remember of my children growing, laughing, and smiling because of Kalyria?

My darling babies are what make me ignore that part of me; I ignore it for their safety because it is not fair. I am a mother first, and if I give up that job, I give them up. What mother would do that is beyond me. My sons give me hard times, but they give me unconditional love for no reason. They tell me they love me even on my cruddy days where I wish I were not around because of this or that. And my daughters, they show me that there is beauty in this world blooming in all ways. I can hope for them, and in that hope, I know I can be there. They can teach me so much and I can teach them even more.

Though, without my husband I would not have them either. It is his love for me that he gave them to me, in hopes to fill that hole that I have for the ones I have lost, the ones that are held in the arms of higher beings now. I have had my hard times dealing with him because of his addictions and lies. But everything he has done and come back from makes me believe I am here as his pillar of hope things can get better after those storms. He has more faith in things because of how he was raised, his family being church going people since forever. He is strayed in his time and yet he goes back because in his mind, it is how it is.

Why can’t I do that? My dad did not make us go to church, did not say grace, or pray with us. My family never brought that into conversations, never even hinted it. Only times it came up, funerals. That is, it. Funerals were the only times I ever remember going into a church. To mourn. Maybe a wedding but those were so few and far between, it is a wonder it made a difference.

Again, I bring myself to think: What is faith? My definition of it is the belief in an idea of something to follow and feel safe to give yourself to. Though I still cannot bring myself to saying I can do that now. Where was it all when I was raped? When I lost my babies? When my best friend died? While I was laughed at and alone? I looked for something and because I could not find anyone to show me, I did not know it was there. Even know I feel I cannot believe yet.

I can listen to the songs at church and feel something, but it is because of the people there. They sing with such strength of faith that it is stunningly beautiful. The people raise their hands, they pray, they talk about what comes to them, and they have that faith. Why can’t I bring myself to do the same? What am I so afraid of when it comes to feeling that? To trying to give my soul to someone other than myself? I cannot feel safe without knowledge I am going to be taken care of, that I am going to be remembered even when I will not remember others.

I feel loved there while I feel I do not deserve it. They do not know I am married to a guy while I enjoy my time with other women in other than friendship. They do not know that I gave up a child because I knew I hated myself for how she came to be and how I could not do it myself. How I wished I did not have her in me for so long only to be born unfinished. How I wish to die on those dark days when everything could not be worse and yet got worse every time I turned around. I still feel loved.

I am still loved even when I cannot seem to know why they would love me at all.

How can I find that compassion when I am too scared to know what that feeling is in the first place? Do I just let it in, or can someone show me? Will I ever know?

I wish I knew it all already.