I am so stuck, or out of breath, or lost in thoughts that are more like noise, or claustrophobic, or in a vacuous empty space where no noise exists. I’m stuck in the monotony of my day to day. It’s all the same, one day to the next, there is no difference. I’m at home 95% of my week because it is too frustrating to have the car and have to lug 3 boys around with me everywhere I go and it defeats the purpose of getting time out of the house because it just feels like I’m bringing the frustrations of the house with me. I thrive off of visiting with grown-ups - like any stay at home mom of littles would. I actually had an opportunity to visit with adults last week and came home feeling charged (odd for this introvert). But those moments are so few and far between. Like, eons between. The exhaustion of my days that run together into one suck up all my energy, my thought energy, my emotional energy, my lust for my husband energy, my desire for anything else energy. I’m so spent that I can’t even imagine anything different. My journal entries are almost all sorrow or frustration or questioning or anger. The occasional positive entry is because I fight to force myself to write something good. I go a day of trying to find gratitude and then feel defeated by the battles with the boys. I’d sit and cry in the closet everyday except I just feel too numb. I feel like bread with no salt or sugar. Bland, dry, wasted.

I never knew this about myself, I never knew that I was the kind of person that could be beaten down by circumstance, or I just never paid attention to it before. I didn’t know I was the kind of person that needed more than this, this state I’m living in. I spent half my life believing I just wanted to be a wife and a mom, as if that was what would fulfill me, give me purpose, give me all the charge I would need. These days it just charges me to anger, to a quick response, to frustration, to resentment and regret.

 I used to be the joyful person, I used to be the encourager. I sparked Brad’s interest in me with a joke about dimpled chads. I wrote a letter of encouragement to a select handful of leaders of our church and it went “viral” in a sense, going beyond who I wrote it to, reaching other members and encouraging them as well. 

These days, joy is not natural for me, the encouragement is sparse. I do not feel like myself. There is a stranger walking around inside me, and I don’t know how to evict her. I have days of spending time reading my bible and praying and nothing changes. Every morning I wake up and think Shakespeare, “once more into the breach dear friends” I’m tired before my feet hit the floor. 

This is what it is to feel empty.

When you might as well be wandering the desert and out of nowhere comes a whetting of your lips and it feels good for the moment and then it’s gone. It is so much of a tease you’d almost rather it never happened. It’s not enough to get you to the next dune, just enough to drive you mad. 

Why is there more dry than wet? Why is there more sorrow than joy, more dark than light? How am I getting through the days. How did I become an unintentional hermit? How do I go about finding new people? None of my people are here. So, what do I do about that?

I saw on social media a picture of a handful of women I don’t even know, and the person who posted it talked about the meeting and how great it was to talk about the matters of the heart and I could have wept and burned my phone all at once. SO jealous was I, that I walked around with a knot in my gut all day. I had no idea how desperately I longed for that kind of face to face connection with women of faith within the realm of my own creative disposition. To be encouraged creatively, to be heard and loved, not judged, not hidden. Do be given an opportunity, space to move and live and have my being. I don’t feel like I have that freedom. I sit at the computer to write and the boys crawl all over me and cry that I won’t let them play games on it. So long, creativity. 

Don’t cry for me. This isn’t a plea for sympathy. This is just me writing out my feelings to try to understand them. I am aching for community, MY OWN community. Something that is just me. Not because of Brad or the boys but something that has come out of who I am. I am not finding it here. And I have tried. I feel like I am being stopped, held back, hidden. 

It’s not about you right now Colleen - Your husband and children are more important than you. 

That is the feeling I am blanketed with most days. 

Your husband is filling his calling, you know.. to GOD, so don't f@#$ that up. And your kids are growing up in a nice quiet town, they have a good school and your house has a big yard and your street has lots of neighbour friends to play with so, don’t get your whiny self in there and mess it up. Just keep laying yourself down for others and everything will be fine. Besides, how important are your needs anyways? Be a good Christian girl and sacrifice. 

I don’t know where to go from here. I feel like I should be the faithful Christian and sum this up, tie it neatly with a bow about hope and strength and the Lord sustains me, and I suppose somehow he has because somehow I’m not lost, but I do not feel quite found yet either.