I'm at War with Myself

about imposter syndrome, logic and faith

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I’ve been staring at this page for weeks. Nothing feels good enough or done enough to share. I have written and rewritten a hundred different beginnings and to be honest, I psyched myself out. This was supposed to be fun but I just put a ton of pressure on myself and now I don’t know how to shake it off.

Surely, I’m not the only artist or human that does that. I’ve written pages and pages worth of feelings, and things I’ve observed, and lessons I’m learning. I have whole books worth of poems and writings and thinkings and musings that sit collecting digital dust in my phone. I look at my resume and wonder, how on earth the same girl that has accomplished those things can feel immobilized, paralyzed, terrified and not enough, still. These feelings all know how to isolate me and make me feel alone in my personal, private black hole. But I *know* I’m not the only one.

I wanted to share that I am going through this because I’ve never known how to hide my feelings well, and I think everybody here would notice if I tried to be anything other than how I currently feel. The thing is, everything is okay. My world is not ending or on fire or even disintegrating below my feet. It’s simply being rearranged. Like Pangea.

I wanted to share a few things I wrote a while ago. They’re honest, and vulnerable, and real. And deeply personal, but hey, that’s what you paid for. I mean, this isn’t even going to be fully polished. It’s not spaced correctly, proof read, or even edited for clairty. These are my purely raw thoughts, copied straight from the moment I wrote them in my notes app. I can’t even bring myself to polish it right now because I’m afraid it’ll give me too much time to overthink. Overthinking may be an artist’s worst enemy. And I can’t keep letting it stop me.

What’s fascinating to me about these writings, is that they were written a few years ago in a different season of my life. And yet, they are entirely applicable to me currently and to the me from the past several weeks. The fact I came across these last week feels like magic to me now. They were like a potion for bravery, and I felt like I needed to share them quickly before the effect wore off.

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A God to Fight My Battles

God shows up every morning
Dressed in armor ready to go
When i don’t want to get out of bed He gently wakes me, softly encourages, and fills my lungs with air to breathe.
God shows up when I’m sitting on the floor of my shower
Crying because it’s all too much and i can’t see anymore and He wipes the tear drops that mix with raindrops falling from my shower head onto my knees.
God shows up every time the darkness plants an evil thought somewhere inside.
He’s there with a metal detector and a shovel ready to search for it, find it, and dig it out of me.
I know faith is real, i know God is real, because i hear him in the quiet voice that refuses to let me quit. If a hundred thousand dark thoughts invaded me, the voice would whisper a hundred thousand and one times more.
I can’t explain it because it’s supernatural, how persistent that little voice can be. It never shouts or screams or demands, but it always persists.
I keep wondering if this is rock bottom. Every day i look up and try to see if the sky looks farther than it did yesterday, if my surroundings have gotten more bleak.
Lately i wake up with the sadness pouring out of me. The tiredness, the heaviness, the darkness trying to keep me pinned to my bed. like I’m sinking in quicksand like I’m caught in a patch of nasty sticky tar. It’s a dark smoke that fills up everywhere but it can’t ever touch the secret place the Voice hides in. It must move around every day.
“Her heart is hurting more today than yesterday, let’s plant some happy seeds in there to grow”, “her legs won’t get her off the couch, let’s nestle in her knees, her joints must be a little rusty and in need of some oil” “hey code red, look like the eyes have dams holding back big tears, we need a demolition crew.. gotta let those bad boys flow” “mayday mayday, her fingers won’t write out her feelings; fire up those vocal cords, we gotta get out those words”.
I guess what is revolutionary is that no matter how many times i scream and curse at Him, God still shows up every morning on my doorstep armed for battle ready to fight for me. I’ve been trying to figure out for so long now why, no matter how hard i try, i can’t seem to quit. Why i can’t give up. Why i can’t seem to waste away. Even when I’ve prayed for this. Even when I’ve genuinely wanted this. Even when my heart felt like it had nothing more to give. I can’t say that i figured it out or solved the case but I’m just saying that I’ve witnessed the most interesting phenomenon. And it’s that my body physically moves to carry me through the day even my my heart is telling my brain to tell my legs to stay in bed. Where does that come from? Why does that happen? I theorize that it’s because of hope.

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Hope Sits on a Shelf

Hope sits on a shelf in my bedroom. Day in, day out, collecting dust but always catching the light at the right time of day. Hope reflects all her light in tiny fragments that look like confetti on my walls and on my ceiling and i look forward to this magical hour ever day from my bed.