I’m a relatively private person. Recently, however, I find that when I open up about my experiences, it connects with people who need to hear it “from someone who’s been there.”
I’d like to open my New Year’s reflection with a personal journal entry I wrote in May 2011. Not a lot of people know that I started the past decade in a very depressed state of mind. At the start of that decade, the world I knew, the life I lived, had all unravelled. However, I found that those moments defined the strength I would need for the coming 10 years.
So, as I close that chapter of my life, I celebrate that darkness— and have renewed confidence that our souls can weather ANY storm that life brings.
So bring it on, 2020. You KNOW that I have been ready for you.
***
[Untitled.] May 2011
They say that our soul shines brightest when our world is in darkness. I do not know if I believe that, but somehow, I trust that it is only through trials of faith that we come face to face with who we really are.
I'd like to think we'd find someone so beautiful and worth emulating. I'd like to believe we'd find someone with passion, and fire, and a zest for life. I'd like to hope that person is someone who can weather the toughest storms in her life. Yet, just as often as truth is what we perceive it to be, we find that we are not the person we had hoped we'd be.
All of a sudden, the very fabric of your reality unravels before your eyes, in vivid colors- remnants of everything you held to be true and dear. It spins a great thread of vibrancy about you, that you get so caught up in the fantasy you want to believe it brings.
And then.
It suddenly turns pitch black. When the lights come back, you find that your world is a dull shade of grey. Occasionally something glimmers. Steel blue and gun metal. And you try to come near it, but the luster dulls down as soon as it comes close to your touch. You cannot believe how, in an instant, the hands that once brought color to many a soul's world cannot even bring about a single hue in her own life.
Such is a state that feels devoid of passion. For someone who has known what it felt to live with an unquenchable fire within her, to see the flame— but not feel it— is an ache that almost wishes its own death. To be devoid of drive is like being in a prison— it preserves who you are, but keeps you from being truly alive. A pang of emptiness claws inside a hollow soul, and try as you might, an impenetrable wall keeps your hands from reaching out to where you want to be. There is joy and love and laughter outside, yet the haze is so thick that you cannot see through.
That's when you pray.
You make the most complete, humbling act of surrender when you get down on your knees and pray. Not just any prayer. This is the prayer that moves mountains, the prayer that screams from the depths of your soul, the prayer that has love and life and joy and tears and sorrow and anger and forgiveness and retribution without you ever knowing which one you truly feel at a given point in this axis of time. The prayer that silences. The prayer that stills. Stills the storms that have ravaged through your life. Calms the sea that has risen way higher than you've ever experienced. Quiets the heart that longs for peace.
In the quiet moment of rediscovering what faith means, you slowly but surely regain yourself.
It doesn't happen in an instant, no. There is some house cleaning to be done. There is dust from cobwebs to be swept out of corners. There are windows that need to be opened. There are fresh rose-colored curtains that need to be hung.
And this is only the beginning.
It is a most a daunting task, but not for someone who wants to live the life she was born to live. We all have a calling. We all have something special in ourselves that make us the best we can be.
… I will get there. You’ll see.
***
[Crisel's note in 2020: I made it through, after all! 🙂 ]
Photo from 2019, by Jeff Ip. No make up on this one.
