This isn’t the inspirational part of the story. This is the regression into the days when I didn’t know who to ask for help. The days when I was regularly yelling at my children, exhausted at each nightfall. It’s the alone feeling that seems imposed, unfair.
This is the part when I’m triggered by deaths in outer circles, stabbed to the heart by the pain left in their wake. I see a world of fear, resentment, and envy. It’s not inside me, but it presses from all sides.
But it is inside, isn’t it? For all the love I have been gifted, for all of the love I have found and cultivated, the fear waits below.
I heard something about that in an AA meeting. The addiction, the fear, is working all the time. I might do better love work than ever, but fear never stops preparing for its moment. I’ve felt this coming. A terrified child holding his ears closed tight against the terrified din of this world. At once feeling too small to fight against it and not wanting to access that monstrous bully to burn it down.
Integration. Those parts of me that still don’t feel like me. I know what to do with them. Finding the time and space to do that work in this forced isolation as a family, that is hard.
I have to first stop with the excuses. This is work I have to do, regardless of the circumstances.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason