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Despair 

Tell me how it started?

Well, I remember it being very dark

Not completely black

I think I would have noticed something was wrong if it was

No

Instead

The darkness was grey

An unsettling yet bearable grey

Like those storm clouds that hang low in the sky

Warning you 

But not making you 

Scared enough to run

They make you concerned 

But not enough to do anything

So, I waited the storm out

I didn’t leave

Made a home in the grey

Hoping it would eventually pass

To leave behind a light blue sky

As the backdrop for my soul

Was anyone with you?

Yes

The grey had a source

Despair had a face

But it was someone I cared for

Someone I loved

Three years of building something that required pieces of me to make

I gave and gave until I couldn’t ignore the ache

Looked down and saw there was more of me missing

Than there was of me to take

Things I once was—were dead

My smile couldn’t seem to light a room the way it used to

Like I couldn’t seem to sit and let happiness have its way with me

My dreams died before I finished thinking them up

Like I could only see a few days into the future

As far as my outstretched hand

Everything bubbly in me was drained right from out my spine

Leaving me bent over

Head hanging beneath anyone’s line of sight

Does anybody see me?

Does anybody want me?

I couldn’t see myself anymore

I didn’t want myself anymore

All these things were the warning signs

They turned to siren cries

Blinding flashing lights

I had to get away

Or at least

That’s what they all told me

But I couldn’t find a way to hear it

I didn’t have the courage to do it

To leave someone I loved

What did the grey do to you?

Grey turned me upside down

When there’s grey

I go on red

Stop on green

No means yes

Yes means no

Leave means stay

Last time is only another way to say I’ll see you again

I found compromise to be the currency of a grey life

Give and take became less give more take

Boundary lines were unbearable

Invisible

Despicable

Boundary lines were heavy ties—to rules and regulation

But those don’t exist in the grey

Grey leaves no room for the future

Only space for the now

No room for responsibility

Only space for neglect

I thought grey had room for the feelings

The rush

The moment

For what I thought was love

But turns out it barely had room for us

The rest was taken up by lust

Like me

Taken up by lust

Believing the relationship was a must

Sacrificing my soul at the doorstep of sweet nothings

Beckoned by the warmth of an untamed fire

Building a tiny little life

On tiny little lies

“I’ll be yours

You’ll be mine”

We let flames go unaddressed 

And they burned holes in us

You would tell me I was fine
And I’d say the same to you

You would tell me

I don’t want to be friends

I want to be secret lovers

Grey

I don’t want to address the pain

I want everything to stay the same

Grey

I don’t want to know you

I want to hold you

Grey

I don’t want to care for you

I want you to care for me

Grey

I don’t want to see you

I want to keep you

Grey

I don’t know how to live without you

I won’t live without you

I can’t live without you

Black

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Completely

Utterly

Desperately

Black

A quiet suffocating black overwhelmed me

And I knew then—I’d never get out

So, how did you do it? How did you get out?

I wish I could say I did it

I pushed the black out

Folded up the grey sky

Put it in my back pocket

Commanded it to have no more control over me

Cut off the toxic relationship with a single snip

And walked away

But I couldn’t move

I was in no man’s land 

Ridden with incurable inability

Paralyzed by the thought of the pain that would come by leaving

And the pain that would come by staying

Then what actually happened?

3 a.m.

I woke up to the most unsettling fear 

It had choked out sleep

And I found myself too frantic to breathe

I knew who was with me

God himself flooded my small bedroom with his spirit

All of His character gave way to a single isolated quality

God is a jealousGod

Enraged with indignation toward his child

Toward me

I knew then it wasn’t even about getting out

The question became

Do you want God?

Or this relationship?

I remember screaming

Yelling at God

Weeping as the words escaped my mouth—

“I don’t trust you.

I don’t trust that you will be on the other side of surrender

I don’t trust a life with you…is better than the grey.”

It got worse before it got better

That’s what they always say

But that’s because it’s the only way

Light doesn’t kiss darkness

It shatters it

Light doesn’t hug darkness

It suffocates it

So much of me was black and grey

So much of me sold to the darkness

That I felt the effects too

I was crushed

I was hopeless

I was restless

I was needy

I was angry

I was sad

Until I wasn’t anymore

I stopped seeking healing for healing’s sake

Or sanity for sanity’s sake

Or wholeness for wholeness’s sake

I sought daily to sit with the Father

The same one I yelled at in the early hours of the morning

I began seeking the healer himself

And by His tender kindness

He brought light into despair

A light into the room when I smiled again

He brought wholeness back into my bones

He taught me to walk again

Talk again of His goodness

Smile again 

Dream again about the future

Laugh again

Where are you now?

I am standing

And

“I lift my eyes up to the hills—

Where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord

The maker 

Of heaven and earth