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Outside the Box: What is Joy?

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 5, 2016 as part of a series.

Continued from We Are Less Fragile

Another anonymous post from a creative soul friend.

Dear ****,

I’m not writing this for you, cause I know you’ll never read it.

I’m not writing this for you either, or you or you or you. I’m writing this for You, and I’m writing this for me.

Did you know I was at a point in high school, yellow light and kneeled prayers on my bed, please help me to be well I can’t handle this the rest of my life I’ve only been living this for four months!, and how did I still get the kind of grades I got that semester?

My freshman roommate from the start was a foreign creature but do you know the kind of embarrassment I felt when she asked me why it is I wash my hands so often!, she doesn’t know how it feels to hate yourself in the black and green of the mirror and wash your hands at midnight because of all the things you did wrong that day, hate your face in the morning fluorescent because of the way the lighting picks out the red on your cheeks when everyone else’s face is clear, stare quaking at your feet pointed toes in the library and unable to raise your head to the sky lit and clouded sky because your mind is turning turning please please help me can I know this is right which choice do I take cause something like a class schedule can obviously completely make or ruin your entire life!

Do you know about the times that I sat huddled in the corner of my room by the closet door at night all alone, knowing I was worthless and horrifically flawed because he talked to the blond one and not to me, cause from the moment I first heard his voice and saw his eyebrows he has held sway on a piece of my heart and you know that he holds it still.

(and yeah you know I still love him but there’s something different about you, something different, don’t worry).

I told my sixth roommate that my thoughts are a pressure cooker, that they spin and spin and spin the pressure clamps down harder, I can’t get out because I don’t know how I got in and she asked me how it doesn’t drive me crazy. This one was a nice boy but I couldn’t get out because all of a sudden he couldn’t compare to A— L—! Too many times I’ve loved a broken human being cause this wasn’t the first time but not the last either.

(and answer—it does.)

I don’t want to tell you about the times that I laid in my bed and I laid on the couch and there was sun behind the window but my ceiling was blue shadow, hearing a daybird sing in the first-summer twilight and listening to A Comet Appears and Pink Floyd’s The Wall way too many times until I couldn’t be anything but a tortured artist, cause the myth of the tortured artist is a persuasive one, you know.

I don’t wanna talk about that last dark semester, too many lonely nights with the light of my iPod at 2am in that strange dusty back room, my roommate was a perfect child with a secret and I never knew her in the six months that she slept five feet from me, ducking her head in the hallway and cripplingly polite as she was, she went to bed at 10pm and stood up at the first chime of her alarm in the morning and I sat and wrote in the dark and listened to her sleep. There was a quiet storm raging in the rest of my apartment and I knew from the first day and especially at the last that I could see the lights on the mountains and that everyone else couldn’t.

That was a semester of black and gold, under fire from heaven, on my knees by my bed but unable to think about anything but my next assignments. I was doing everything right but the formula for me wasn’t working, I was losing everything that’s so important to me and I tried to read thy words but instead I would bite my knuckles and my hands and wish I could cut myself open like a fish—!

My brother let me cry on his chest for three awful hours in between the trees and the streetlights. I could see the yellow light from the doors opening and shutting like matchbooks in the parking lot and I wished someone would hear me out there because my entire being was crying out and I just couldn’t believe that nobody could see it!

I was trapped by two boys that were like anchors on my feet. But when I went with you to the salt flats like I had dreamed every day for half a year, looked to the sky and asked what a terrible world what a beautiful world, walked in the pink and spun poetry from the air, and then when I came back those kind of anchors ceased to have any kind of relevance to my being—!

I’ve been writing like a fiend since the eleventh day of last December. I’m sounding the river of my being, in time and place like a rapid bioassessment and searchable by a magnifying glass. I’ve said a thousand times that my existence is not sustainable, that I am burning inside like a swamp gas, and I only write stories that are true.

I don’t wanna say this but there is something about you that fills me up with gold.

I don’t need all that anger and those blessed twenty-one pilots expressing my broken relationship with my God. You’re such a help to me above and below, you’re so kind and special and so quiet but your soul is so so good, you showed me that you don’t have to be boring to be good, you let me soften my heart and fill my being back up with light. I’ve laughed to the sky a hundred times since the start of September, I tell myself that no one who gets this little sleep should be allowed to be this happy.

Some days I have the bones of a bird but I can’t tell you about all the mornings that I wake up with a sandbag in my chest. I can’t explain why but I’m doing better than I have been in years and years and years, I would never take away anything that has ever happened to me because everything in the world is beautiful.

And you know I had a moment in the green and the blue while I was walking under that bridge in Iceland, an insane trust in God that has been more solid and enduring than any trust I’ve had in Him before, despite the sunlight on the walls in that window-filled room and despite naps in the park and a firestorm in my brain just last weekend, there have been hands on my head and a peace in my heart as I’m kneeling on my deep blue sheets every single night, but now I think I get that You love me as I am, because for the longest time it’s been I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, but you know that right now it’s just thank you thank you thank you.

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Outside the Box: We are less fragile

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 2, 2016 as part of a series.

Continued from I Wish I Didn’t Know

My friend Mary Nikkel, who I once knew by the online nickname Elraen, was the first blogger I started regularly reading while I was still trapped in the cult my family was in, the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. She blogs at Threads of Stars. Here is what she wrote about recovering from spiritual abuse.

I grew up believing that I could break other people, break myself, break the world, with the smallest of missteps.

There was a list of movies I couldn’t watch and music I couldn’t hear because they would break my mind.

There was a list of things I couldn’t wear because they would break the minds of others.

There was a list of words and opinions I couldn’t say because they would break someone else’s perception of the Christian faith.

There was a corresponding list of words and opinions I had to say because I would be sending someone to hell if I were to omit them.

The lists of the way I could break things seemed endless, and I lived by the letter of their law with an awful holy terror. But there are terrible consequences to believing you live in a world so breakable, with a soul so fragile. I began to feel like I was, at best, a weak excuse of a human for being so unable to meet the list of requirements, and at worst, a weapon designed only to damage the world. Better if I be removed for the sake of safety, my mind whispered on the dark nights. Better if I erase myself before I break anything or anyone else.

When grace opened the door to a wider world and I learned to walk in it (certainly with my fair share of bruises and skinned knees along the way), I would quickly be startled by a few truths. First was that the world was more elastic than I had imagined, that sometimes when I fell, rather than shattering beneath me like brittle glass, this wild life embraced me and bent around me and became a new kind of beautiful. Second was that sometimes even when something did break—my heart, a friendship, some corner of my innocence—my spirit had the ability to mend, like grace had planted this resilient life in me that outlasted even the death of dreams, the death of my strength, the death of all the porcelain pictures I once thought defined “good enough.” And really, perhaps these truths are no surprise in the end, for I believe in the truth of a Christ whose Spirit overcame death—who gifts that same Spirit to me.

On the other side of laws and fear-based protective prisons, I have certainly loved the freedom to enjoy things. I have the freedom to immerse myself in rock and roll, the freedom to dye my hair blue, the freedom to wear shorts and tank tops in the summer, the freedom to watch (and even laugh with) movies that currently matter in pop culture. But perhaps the freedom I have loved even more is the freedom to make mistakes along the way, knowing each small choice will not save or condemn me.

I have certainly found consequences and heartache out here. But I have outlasted them. And the steady hands of friends who have stayed with me, even when I say the wrong thing or say nothing at all, even when I’m feeling too small and dim inside to spark any kind of response to their lavish light, has taught me that maybe I can’t break others as easily as I once believed either. Maybe there is a staying power in our souls beyond anything we could possibly imagine. There is more grace out here than I ever knew.

I believed I was an ember, struggling to stay alive from my place embedded in the ash and dirt. Imagine my surprise to find a spirit like a star burning in me, relentless, impossibly bright, alive though it wander through the coldest walks of the night.

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Outside the Box: I wish I didn’t know

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 1, 2016 as part of a series.

Continued from Butterfly Support Group

Today’s post is from a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.

Content note: child abuse, domestic violence, marital rape

Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The memories of childhood often evoke feelings of longing for a time when happiness abounded.

For some, the wistful, longing feelings of youth give way to an all-consuming emptiness. The definition of a ‘lie’ is to tell something untruthful. The state of untruth, of chronic deceit, replaces any feelings of nostalgia from my past.

I had no uninhibited feelings of curiosity. I lived in constant fear of ‘rebellion.’ An older sibling was always on the verge of a ‘dangerous path’ for some indiscretion.

My youngest memories are of parents whose marriage was on the rocks. In an attempt to maintain the family unit, I was used as a human shield.

I have vivid flashbacks of my father trying to force himself on my mother. The innocence of youth was torn from me at an early age. Every sense was violated by the presence of inappropriate boundaries, or lack thereof, with my parents.

My mother would rarely sleep with my father and usually when she did, I was placed between them.

I was her safe haven. As far back as I can remember, I was her shield, both physically and emotionally. I was not allowed to interact with my other siblings, creating animosity between myself and my siblings.

I was rarely allowed out of my mother’s sight. I was 17 years old before I was allowed to stay at home even if she was only grocery shopping.

However, as with every child, I bonded with my mother. I remember the normal feelings of wanting to please her and gain her approval, which was always elusive. I never knew when she would praise me or attack my “rebelliousness.”

Throughout my childhood I was not allowed to have friends, but I was very close to my sister Faith. We were never separated, which was by my mother’s design. Faith was the other half of the human shield. Combined, we formed a human triangle. We were a unit, it was as though Faith and I were appendages of my mother.

As a child, I was unaware of the cage I was living in.

I was not aware that I was being used as a shield to save a failing marriage. In many ways, I was like any other child.

I loved life, I was curious, I loved my family. I loved my parents. I was sure they really cared for me more than anything. I ran wild on our five-acre plot. I loved the creek near our house and my stuffed animals. I loved my mother’s cooking. I loved to bake cookies and play silly games with Faith.

The young child in me loved life, happiness and wanted only a safe haven, a place to explore the world without fear. But cages are a result of fear.

Paranoia resided in my parents, causing them to isolate their children, allowing us little contact with the outside world. We lived in a cage of patriarchy, guided by an “umbrella” theory of God. The gist of this theory was that our father was the portal through which God gave his will to children, especially girls.

It was my father’s duty to make sure his daughters were “pure” before marriage. It was my father’s duty to give his daughter to a worthy man, meaning he felt entitled to be heavily involved in any dating relationships. Young girls were not allowed to have opinions, much to the dismay of my spunky nature. I wanted opinions, I wanted respect. But I was rarely allowed opinions, and I was often mocked.

Becoming an adult in such a cage was confusing and stressful. Conflict burned within me. I loved my parents, why did I have to choose between them and the world? Was God as rigid as they claimed? Did God think women had a voice? Were women only meant to have babies? Does God hate me if I sin? If I lose my virginity will I go to hell?

Growing up in a cage also makes the bars of the prison cell harder to see. When talking with people ‘outside,’ it was strange when their responses to my circumstances were not in agreement with my parents.

You mean it isn’t normal to sleep on the floor of my parents’ bedroom until I was 14-years-old? You mean God made men and women equal? It isn’t normal for children to be told they are half-aborted? There is such a thing as marital rape, that isn’t only possible if you are unmarried? How can a husband rape his wife, aren’t they supposed to have sex?

Coming out of the cage, realizing my childhood was merely a chess game, in which I was nothing more than a shield, was more than painful. Adequate words are not available to explain how I can no longer look back on my youth, frolicking in my backyard without thinking about the cage I was in.

I cannot think of my long talks with Faith at night, memories I formerly cherished, without remembering how we were really drowning out the screaming of my parents. We were the shields, my life was a lie.

I can no longer see the remnants of my former life without feeling the stabbing pain of the lie of childhood. I cannot look back at my young self without feeling pity.

Sometimes I long for the home I thought I had as a child. I long to be a child again because I realize I never really experienced childhood. I was never in a safe environment. Sometimes I feel starved of love, ill-equipped to handle adulthood because I was not nourished. Just as bones break when they lack protein, the heart breaks when it lacks love.

The phrase, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” rings true for those who look back and see a dark past where once they saw a blooming meadow.

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Poem: Outside

The sun is shining over the flowers my grandfather planted. They’re still growing, long after he died in 1995.

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on February 28, 2016.

One of my goals for 2016 was to write a new spoken word poem every month. Here’s February’s poem.

We can breathe again, out here in the open.
Drink in lemonade sunlight
because each one of us has faced so much dark.
Right now my journey can be described by a Taylor Swift song,
and I’m okay with that.
The world I once lived in
was clearly defined by words like
good and bad,
light and darkness,
believers and unbelievers.
If you were not for us, you were against us,
and criticism of the church meant betrayal.
One of my roommates who grew up like I did
couldn’t even wear gray clothing,
gray was not in our vocabulary
because gray was not supposed to exist.
Anyone who lived in the gray was shunned
because they were really black and just didn’t know it yet.
But life, this life has so much color.
I lost my greyscale sunglasses somewhere behind me,
and now I can see the full spectrum.
Sometimes I’m still finding my coordinates,
and this road is nothing like what they told me it would be.
So some days, I will still ask you:
“Are we out of the woods yet?”
because I’m afraid to believe your answer is true.

They told me my emotions were evil,
that the numbness in my soul was the sacrifice my God required,
they took away my oxygen.
It’s a daily renewal,
this learning to inhale again
when you were nearly dead inside.
You don’t understand what safety is
until that first time your heart knows it,
and there will still be days when we shiver at shadows,
because the darkness can only fade, not be forgotten.
I cracked open
and shattered into hundreds of shards, scattered,
and yet I am finding my pieces.
I no longer have words to describe my doctrine,
my theology is like waves down at the gulf shore
tumultuous, yet cyclical
murky, but shimmering
and when the tide catches me,
I can’t tell you how far down I am.
My religion is complicated,
a living fire always melting the ice
until I can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips.
I embrace your newborn freedom
while I exult in my own.
One day I know that they will see all of us
as a kaleidoscope of stained glass windows
because we could not be broken.

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Outside the Box: Butterfly support group

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on February 29, 2016 as part of a series.

Laura blogs over at Laura’s Light. This post was originally posted on her blog on January 22, 2016.

I feel so lonely. And… I don’t know what to do.

Does a butterfly feel lonely in the cocoon? Or does it have butterfly conversion support group meetings?

I don’t know. But I wish I had them.

I wish I had someone at my beck and call, people who would come whenever I needed them: to say hello or to just sit next to me and be. But it doesn’t work like that. People have their own lives, their own things going on. And they can’t always come. It feels like they can’t more often than not these days.

Or maybe I just don’t know how to ask.

I don’t. I know that. I don’t want to let myself need people, to not be ok.

But if we’re honest, this butterfly has gone through a hell of a lot of shit this year.

And she doesn’t know what to do. And she needs people. She just doesn’t know how to ask.

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