and this is the medium in which I have chosen to express these "skeletons"..
for one thing, lately i've felt extremely lonely, and I had the revelation recently that I have felt this lonely a really long time.
In short, I don't know where I fit in, where I belong...
I am a 22 year old single mother, going to college, and everyone around me is getting married..
I don't fit in with the college generation, because I don't have the liberties they all have to go the bars, and have late nights out with friends.. most of my time is spent staying in with a baby, and how she is basically dictates everything I am....
I don't fit in with the "marrieds" because once my friends get married I feel like they enter this stage of life I don't have access to.. that they go and live on this "members only" Island and I am left out.. feeling isolated...
Even when they have children I don't belong with them, because being married and having a child is a completely different realm that I can't even touch, being an unwed mother...
For one thing, the leaders in my church bless and ordain and exhort those who have children after marriage... but I have always felt, and fear I will always feel swept under the rug.
When the father of my daughter fled the coop and moved to the other side of the country, not one leader reached out to me to comfort me, or even ask if I needed prayer... I felt like they all thought I deserved desertion.. that they all sided with him, and I hurt terribly because of it...
I kept retracing my steps.. what did I do to cause him to run? I let him know time and time again I wanted him in my daughters life. I didn't love him romantically and I couldn't control that aspect of our relationship but I cared for him, and my daughter's well-being was always the top priority in my eyes...
so when he left leaving behind all this wreckage and lies.. I found myself believing I deserved the abandonment... maybe it was my fault? maybe I ran him off?
but after all this time I realize I did nothing wrong, and there was nothing more I could have done to make him stay. I begged him to stay, pleaded even.. sobbing.. apologizing for anytime I may have been cranky with pregnant hormones.. apologizing for things I didn't know I was apologizing for..... I felt so helpless...
and it turns out I was.
I don't know how to obtain the love, affection and respect I know deep down in my heart I deserve from the leaders of my church... my daughter is a year and a half today and they still won't reach out to me...
I feel like a leper.... an untouchable...
I feel like every inch of me is trying so hard to reach a level of praise...
I need to be skinnier, smarter... I need to succeed at something.. maybe then... oh yes.. maybe then people will see all the things I had to triumph over..
maybe then someone might be proud, someone might acknowledge my existence... someone might even encourage me once in awhile...
but all of this striving for some kind of perfection (in any facet of my life) is entirely in vain...
I stop now to think to myself... will this make me happy? What Utopian life am I dreaming of that will bring me all the happiness I have lost in my 22 year journey?
If I were married would that make me happy?
-my family would be complete
-I would never physically feel alone
-maybe then people wouldn't look down their nose at me for being an unwed mother..?
If I graduated college would that make me happy?
-I would have succeeded in something most people thought I couldn't
-I would have invested a degree in the future of my daughter and myself
-would this make me seem smart?
If I were skinnier would this make me happy?
-I would feel better about myself
-Ethan already thinks I am beautiful
-I would have to sacrifice eating the foods I love..
-I would have to buy new clothes with money I don't have because I wouldn't fit the clothes I currently have...
despite having hypothetically achieved the above goals... My glass half empty paradigm will not be shifted... What will it take to achieve happiness? What will it take to become whole?
Jesus is the answer to these questions but even he doesn't seem to be encouraging me in anything I do...
I feel like Ethan is my only friend.... everyone else is out there living a life worth while.. and I am some sort of outcast... trying to fit in to society, trying to strive for utopia, and drowning in stagnancy...
and he is the only one by my side...
it's lonely...
I don't know what else to say...
Pray for me... thank you.
