Feeling Small

Let’s be honest. I’ve been feeling small lately. Really small. Weak, really weak. Sad, really sad. This thing called life and the weight of it has settled on my shoulders. Like a heavy, wet blanket, it rests there. Slowing me down and making every step taken, like trudging through mud.

I’m tired. Unmotivated. I can’t sleep, but my eyes always feel heavy. My arms fall to my sides like chains. Some days I cry. Some days I just look out the window. Some days I escape my life by reading about everyone else’s.

The grey skies cast such a grand shadow, it is hard to believe the light will show through again. I shiver. Cold. I’m always cold. I pile on layers, yet I shake.

I’m always the strong one. The responsible one. The ‘you can do it’ one. But I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel like ‘I can do it’. Many days, I float through the motions, miming the life of a strong and happy woman. Because I know she’s there somewhere. Buried under the burdens and bricks of life.

The murk of it all seems to take such a strong hold sometimes, that the will to fight, to punch, to claw my way through is overcome.

I always come out on the other side.  Somehow. Some way. And I trust I will get there again. But this is the darkest it’s ever been. And that scares me. How can I care for my family, when I find it hard to care for myself?

I’ve been searching for the rays. Steady streams of light that have the strength to break through the darkness. I know they are there. I know they will find me. But I have to get up. I have to reach for them. They won’t always shine down upon me, unless I look up, unless I hold on.

“You are so strong Heather. You are. I don’t know how you do it. You are the strongest person I know,” they say.

Sometimes, I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be the strongest person, because then I feel like I always have to be strong. I always have to be large and full of life. Smiling and spreading love.

And sometimes. I just can’t. Sometimes, I want to be allowed to just feel all the feelings I hold in my heart, in my hand. But usually, I push them deep down. In a place that others can’t see. And in the quiet of the night, or the aloneness of my day – I let them out.

One tear at a time. And then I’m real…

Broken but whole. Fractured but mended.

And I remember what it is like to be human. And what it is to be whole.

Because the fractures and the breaks – they don’t take away the wholeness. They make it.

I’m learning to be okay with all of me. The strong parts, but especially the weak and meek parts. Because that IS what makes me whole. That is what makes me, me.

It isn’t always pretty, but it is always real.

I dry my tears. I breathe. And I prepare myself to do it all over again.

It will get better. It always does.

Because…I am the strong one.