Sorry I haven't written much lately on the blog--I've been busy adventuring and breaking free...but I need to tell you about it now.
Here recently, we have been scanning hundreds of old pictures, drawings, journal entries and clumsily worded drug-induced poetry from my childhood to place all throughout the book. This will invite the reader on more of a visual journey with me and my family. Those tangible elements will open up another dimension to the past and present of The Family Portrait. Plus, books with pictures are way more fun.
It's true that great adventures are always full of discovery, exploration and challenges. And sorting through the memories of my past and rediscovering the person I used to be has been just that--a great adventure. While it has been exciting to dig up all that old stuff, it has not come without it's darkness. I was lied to so much as a kid that the image I had of myself had become a LIE. To see it all now as a transformed adult makes me question a lot of these lies that were instilled in me. Through this adventure, I am learning to break free from my false identity.
This particular writing came from a very dark time in my life at about 16 years old:
Looking back I see that I was a hurting, lonely boy in search of a deeper hope to my existence. I really believed my life was just a "mass void of endless disappointments." I had no self-worth and I would constantly drown myself in these lies and numb myself with drugs. I needed "something I could never have" and that was, LOVE. I never felt worthy of receiving love. The fact was I truly BELIEVED all these things about myself because people were constantly telling me I wasn't good enough.
I remember a moment when I was about 5 years old, being scared after falling asleep on the couch. I ran through the dreary trailer house hallway, to my mom's bedroom, smelling the familiar sour odor of dirty dishes and spilled alcohol. The door was locked and I could hear a man's grizzly voice on the other side as I beat on the door with tears streaming down my face. As he opened the door, I recognized his weathered charcoal-face and yellowed teeth as one of the members of mom's satanic cult. He took the back of his hand and swung it up into my face with such force that it knocked my back into the hallway. "Worthless shit!! Get out of here!" he said with a gnarled intense growl. I sat in the hallway crying as blood from my upper lip dripped into my mouth and then I heard my mom screaming at him, "GET OUT!!!!" He left that night but sadly wouldn't be the last time we would meet. My mom sat on her bed crying and I asked her what was wrong. She said "You!! You kids are my problem!" Something that I didn't realize at the time was how deeply those words took root. They became my truth.
Situations and conversations like this were a constant in my childhood and adolescence. It seemed the harder I would search for acceptance, the further from it I would get. Like in my journal entry, I truly felt that "happiness was a disease." When I was happy I would just be on edge waiting for the tables to turn...to be disappointed, to have happiness stolen from me again. I needed love and acceptance so I kept trying and just kept getting dissapointed. The lie that I was unlovable and unworthy had sunk so deep in my heart, that it became truth I had to swallow daily. The crazy part is that when I was living in this lie, I didn't realize how it was effecting my daily life. When you feel worthless, you act worthless. I then began making decisions based out of the 'truths' I believed. These falsities guided my narrative, my story, into places I never wanted to go.
Now as an transformed adult, and as a follower of Christ, all of those lies are completely gone and nothing bad ever happens and life is perfect and I live on a rainbow and crap glitter sprinkles...NO.... THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS! The same lies of years and years of past abuse come into my life on the daily. Even though I'm healed from the weight of past, and I've learned to forgive myself and others around me, it doesn't stop the lies. Now I just know how to fight them. Every day I am aware of God-given grace (something I never that I never fully believed in) to endure life's hardships and discernment to filter the lies from the truth. I am worthy. I am full of life and love. I am not the Timmie I thought I was.
And quite possibly you are not the 'you', you thought you were either. BREAK FREE and live out the truth of who you really are.