By: Bekah Turney

Today, as my mind frenzies with outlandish and infuriating thoughts, the water boiling inside my head finally reaches the edge, spilling over only to burn my skin and awaken me. My emotions push and pull, like the aggressive wind outside this open door I sit near now. And as this all occurs with whirling winds of rage inside my being, I pause in complete understanding, like a light bulb clicking on and my wide eyes stare mesmerized into it.

It’s the feeling of trying to claw out of your own skin, as if in attempts to flee, yet being completely paralyzed to it. Like a reoccurring cycle of self inflicting torment continuously being fed around a painful spinning wheel. As I continue staring into the illuminating light in the bulb of my mind, I recognize my resistance to that which paralyzes me in cyclical torture: it is the idea that I developed into my belief system, that I cannot trust anyone ever. I talk to myself inside my head, bantering back and forth with what seem two of me, ‘How can you lose control of your emotions when you have done so much work and healing? What is it all for then if you keep running into the same problem of letting go?‘ Then the other part of me that counters replies, ‘Well there must be something you’re not seeing or paying attention to that desperately needs your recognition.’ There is a scar I have not yet faced, and seems for a very long time. With every attempt to reach and grasp its truth in my hands, I feel the blade sink further into me. With the unbearable pain I recoil and that is when I try to crawl out of my skin, stuck inside like a hamster on its wheel. It’s like hesitating to take a shot, because the needle must pierce through your skin first to release the medicine that in turn will help you.

Still gazing into the light bulb of my mind, I dissect why the need for mistrust takes residence in my belief system. When I love someone deeply, I feel them integrated as a part of me and open the most beautiful part of myself to them, the most vulnerable and true part of me, I then become the most afraid of losing that person forever. So, the beauty of what love really is feels more like pain. And as I feel this way, because the love is so vulnerable, so deep, I push the ones I care about most away. This means at one point in my life, I believe as a child, at my most beautiful and vulnerable, I was rejected.

Now that I am recognizing this, still not able to remember a specific memory or possible cluster of them, I see that this isn’t who I am, but rather a belief I integrated into my head. I allowed myself to lie about who I really am, because that is how I knew to survive at the time. So, rather than beat myself up for the flaws I created from all I knew at the time to protect myself, I can embrace the truths I have grown to learn at this time right here and now. Oh, and it is painful, it hurts straight down to my core to look at the flaws and try to grasp the concept that they don’t define me, anyone, as a person, ever.

Belief systems are hard to unlearn. But like the analogy above, if you let that needle pierce through to give you the medicine you need, you find the pinch of pain will soon fade, as rather the pain of continuous torment from neglecting your truth will haunt you until met. The pain of the blade that I found sinking deeper in me as I looked at the issue closer each time, is the cry of liberation- after being neglected for so long , it is finally again seen and understood. That is healing. That’s when we say, “Hello again, stranger. It’s so nice to be back home.”

I hear the wind still blowing to and fro as it did when I first started this journey today. Sitting, blanket warming my lap, and my coffee is now cold against pressed lips on the cup’s edge. I see in front of me again. Coming out of the clouds of thought, I watch the breeze through the trees without relating it to the chaos from before, but more now soothing as it passes through. Like the pain I pursued.