The day I dont want to remember....

Here it is again, July 27th. For 38 years it was really the same as any other day. Actually it was always a good day with it falling right in the middle of the summer. As a kid I would be on vacation, or working at the pool. Even as an adult I usually had the summer off from teaching so it was a good day.

But July 27th 2001 became the day I have the spent the last 8 years trying to forget or erase or get over. One moment in a lifetime of moments and yet I have been carrying it with me ever since. How do you let go of something you so desperately want to let go of yet it has become a part of you?

As I write those words I realize it is not a part of me I need to lose but more the me I need to find again. On this day 8 years ago I lost my faith. I lost my hope. I lost my ability to be in this world and trust that all was well and that there was goodness. On this day I learned that I was not untouchable and that those I loved could not be saved by me.

I had always lived a golden life and although certainly there was lose and pain, I had always been able to rise above. And so too with this I tried. I reached down and dragged myself up and forward. I moved and spoke and acted as if because the other choice was insanity. I had a choice to live or to give up. Giving up has never been an option for me. But I have never known how to ask for help.

Nothing worked the same after that day. I never spoke the same. I never laughed the same. I never felt the same. It all shifted in one moment and I became a resident of a world out of focus. It was a world I no longer understood. I was an alien and no one knew it. So what did I do? I pretended and hoped it would get better and in many ways it did. It looked on the outside as though it were better, because that's what I so wanted it to be. Better.

But I had sealed all of my pain, guilt, regret, despair and madness behind a door in my mind. I had closed down part of my heart because the pain I lived with the first year would have destroyed me. And that is how I survived. I moved on as best I could. But always there was that door and in my most secret of places I lived in terror of what lay behind it.

It became a specter which haunted my dreams. It became a waking menace. I was no longer the same. I was changed and no one saw it. I didn't know who I was or why I was here. Yet I tried and moved forward. I tried to find love again. I tried to find hope again. I found pieces of myself again, but always with them was the fear that none of it I deserved. I could be in a room of people and still feel utterly disconnected and alone.

What do people do after a disaster? They rebuild and that's what I did. I rebuilt but my foundation was weak. You see, when I sealed that door in my mind and closed that part of my heart, I shut out God with it. Where was God now? I didn't know how to find Him again. So within the world I built tried to find God in people, places and things. And although God certainly exists within those parameters they are temporary and eventually they fail.

I still lived without hope and without faith. I learned the real meaning of those words. It is easy to have faith when you don't need it. But when you have lost your faith, the meaning becomes so clear and the lose of it is real despair. It was in those moments that I began to find my humanity again. I began to understand the pain of this world. And with that understanding I began to feel compassion, real compassion. Compassion became a light in the darkness and a flame within my heart.

It has been 8 years. It has been 8 days, 8 minutes, 8 breaths. What is time but a spiral which envelopes everything which comes before it? As I move on that spiral I cannot escape what has come before because I have consumed it. It is and will ever be a part of me. It is and will always be who I am today. It will color all I do and all I feel and all I am. And today 8 years later, I am no longer afraid of that door.

Over this last year, with help, I have opened that door. Inside were merely old shoes and clothes which no longer fit me. There were no demons. There were no monsters. I still carry guilt and pain today but I am not afraid of it. I have God again and know that with His help I can walk through my feelings with an open heart. A heart which is broken is a heart which is broken open. And so I live with my new heart.

It is still a day I want to forget. It is still a part of me I think no one will ever understand. It is a part of me I still want to hide away. Today I know that darkness is merely a place which has not had the light brought to it yet. So writing this brings in some light today. And sharing it opens my heart a bit at a time I so want to hide.

This day shall pass as it always does but I do not ever want to forget who I am today. I am a person trying to be as honest and loving as I can be today. Today that is the best I can do.