I know what it's like to feel forgotten. You wake up and there's a moment where you are as disoriented as the day you first came out of the womb, and a point where you have no idea where you are nor who you are. And for some of us, the moment passes and it's on to the rest of the day. For you, it's a continuous moment, a pulsing sensation in your head that pounds and pounds until you can't hear anything else. There's maybe a little voice that whispers into your ear, and it's not the sexy, sultry one from the movies you wish you had in your life; no, this is the one that tells you how repulsive you are, that every aspect of your being is a worthless POS that no one wants to touch. Your friends seem to see past you and they know a version of you that they or maybe you yourself would like to believe is you. All they are really seeing is a simulacrum, a hyper-realized, happy, funny figment of your creation to block any chance of meaningful contact.
You've felt broken for too long. You've been in relationships or friendships that always felt one-sided. Either you tried or they did, but there was never the promised "connection" your friends and family and the movies told you to expect. You make the effort but it seems like you are not good enough, not funny enough, not pretty enough. You feel burned from another in a long line of failures, and you feel low, angry, and bitter. What you take away from it is that it is you and that you are not worth enough, and the little voice echoes those sentiments. What do you do in the midst of a holiday that celebrates something you do not have in the midst of a society that at times worships that same thing? There are buddy cops and cute couples and gal pals and BFFLs and bromances and fate, and it seems like there you are, on the outside of that circle looking in.
But sometimes, there is work going on that we can't see. Our blinders can distract us and lie to our unworthiness, our unloveliness while distracting us from the ones that stand beside us and listen day after day. Sometimes, we have been so conditioned to hate ourselves that we ignore other people's attempts to love us, let alone be able to ignore the voice that runs through our heads. For some of us, the voice will never go away completely, but we have the power to turn away from the voice and not give it power and not give it our pain. We can turn towards those in our lives who give us our voice, not the one in our heads, but even then, we are continuously rediscovering our innate worth. We are rediscovering that it is not people and not things or emotions that make us whole, but our identities as fearfully, wonderfully made human beings. When we remember that, we wake up, and there's a moment where you are as disoriented as the day you first came out of the womb. And then you remember and reorient, and you can be amazed. I look at you, and I'm amazed, not because of what you've done, but because of who you are.
Love,
Josh
