How I Came To Be All Out War

When I started this blog, it was during a time of severe turmoil in my life when I really didn’t think I could hold on much longer. If there WAS anything else that could go wrong, I knew that it probably would, but what I DIDN’T know was whether or not I could come through it with my sanity…

Or my life.

I intended to be completely anonymous and pour out my heart and soul, troubles and woes, the whole nine yards. Someone had given me the idea that since I was a writer, and had been pretty much all my life, that it would be a type of therapy for me. And so All Out War was born.

I’ve said it before, that I am a very private person. I do not put things “out there” for anyone to see, think about, process, hold over my head or try to use against me. Well, that’s what I tell myself. In reality, it may just be that I have trust issues. If there’s one thing that Daddy taught us growing up, it was “Never trust anyone. No one. Do that, and you won’t be hurt nearly as much”.

There’s a whole story in and of itself there, as my Daddy went through a lot of things in his life, the half of which I’ll never really know, I’m sure, as he and Mom were older when my little sister and I are born. He lost his own father when he was only thirteen years old and had to help move the body. There was much death in his life, most of it he witnessed far too close and far too painfully.

But Daddy is the strongest man I’ve ever known.

It may also be that I’m such a private person because I’m that type that not only carries my own hurt, but the hurt of others as well. While I may not cry as much as most people do, my heart breaks all the same. Many times I’ve sat, stony faced, in situations where my guts had been reduced to ashes and rubble. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned to deal with some things a little better, and some things a little worse.

And that’s where All Out War was born. That place that said, “GET OUT!” to everything I’ve ever harbored that has ever killed me inside a little. All the things that I’ve ever tucked away in that “hurts too much to talk about” folder waaaaaaaay back in the back of my mind.

On the upside, though, I’ve already gotten out a lot more than I thought I would, in my own way. Even in vagueness there is a kind of solace that can bring a great deal of relief. And I’ve experienced it a time or two.

So. The is how I came to be All Out War. Where it goes from here, I’m not sure, but hopefully to a place of “normality” for a change. A place where I can move on and maybe even help others who have been where I have been. Isn’t that one of the things that God would have us to do with our valley’s and trials? To learn, thank Him for His grace in having seen us through it, and use it to help others? Surely those things we’ve gone through aren’t just for us, are they?

And maybe, THAT, is what it’s all about…being able to use the hurt, the trials, the heartaches, the “been there, done that” stories to keep someone else from having to wallow as long as we have? Maybe.

We’ll see…

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When Your Angel is a Ghost

So… I’ve been trying for months now to write a post about something I thought I had gotten over, but really, I haven’t.

The death of my nephew.

As I type this, that particular post is up in a separate tab, typed to a certain point before I had to stop writing.

I always stop writing when the tears come. I never let myself cry. Not even when I’m alone. And it’s not just about him, I just don’t let myself cry at all anymore. Maybe because too much of it has gone on in the past, so much that I’m SO SICK and TIRED of hurting!!!!

On a side note, the last time I cried, I realized that my tears weren’t even salty. In a kind of morbid humor, I thought to myself that perhaps my body had been denied tears for so long they had forgotten how to BE tears. I know…it’s just the way I think sometimes…

After some recent events, which basically threw it in my face that maybe I hadn’t dealt with this appropriately, I had decided that I was GOING to write that post. As I said, I’ve been trying for months, maybe longer, to get it out. It needs to come out. At least, for me.

I know everyone has their own way of dealing with things like this, and I thought I had mine, but that little voice in my head finally asked me, “So, if you’ve dealt with it, how come it hurts so much that you don’t even want to talk about him or see pictures of him or anything?”

So I got up this morning with the sole intent of finally writing that post.

Until I got to the part that hurt…

That’s when my heart broke all over again, my eyes filled with tears all over again, and I pushed it away…all over again.

I’m closer than I was. That post has been started, it’s in my queue, and maybe I can add to it and finally finish it at some point. Will it help? I don’t know. And maybe that’s my worry, that I will have revisited all of that and still be in the same mental mud hole I’ve been in for ten years.

I don’t know.

How do you write about a hard thing like that? How do you deal with it when you haven’t let yourself deal with it for so very long?