Do you ever have the burning desire to torch it all to the ground? Friendships, relationships, partnerships, careers? The drive to purify your life with a figurative fire? Clearing the way for new life like the unbridled forest fire?
I’m there. I have been for months now. They say when it rains it pours and the past six to eight months have been a monsoon of (romantic and plutonic) relationships being tested. What really sucks is those relationships are the ones that you are supposed to lean on for support in these very seasons. To have my foundation be chiseled away while the earth beneath me is shaking makes for a violent situation.
I’ve never understood shadiness. The art of playing both sides of the coin. My parents say I have always been a black and white sort of person. Valuing authenticity and one’s ability to just say how it is. I am one that will judge you for what you don’t say in lieu of what does come out of your mouth. Manipulation with a semi-honest narrative will surely grab my ire. Offending by just speaking the truth will garner my respect.
My grasp on reality has been tainted. It’s been such a struggle to sort out the truth in what has been said as it contradicts their actions. Am I the crazy one? How are people not seeing the disparity that I see? Or do they and they just don’t care? If they don’t care, how can you trust these people and lean on them for support? The unquantifiable toll that this takes on your mental health is, at the very least, exhausting. For me, debilitating.
I struggle to understand how I got to this point. How did I let myself ignore the signs that I saw so vividly? How did I let so many people into my life that I knew, deep down, would just end up hurting me in the end? Looking back, I guess it has been a trend since childhood. Giving the narcissists so many second chances. A therapist would probably say it’s my way of trying to fix the first narcissist that I ever looked up to, but yet hurt me so deeply. I guess that should be worked out over $150/hour next week.
Can you really blame a child of the evangelical movement for wanting to burn it all down? We were taught so many times that we are purified, like gold, by the fire. Purging the impurities from our life, making us more like the image of God. The problem is, when you are hurt by the very people that are so insistent that you must be purged by the flames, one can’t help but realize that fire may need to be turned outward.
While I should wait until the rainy season is over to set my world ablaze, I am so desperate to cleanse my life of this torment that I rather expend the futile effort to start a fire only to have it be smothered by the constant pouring.
So, if you see me in the downpour, trying to light some match over and over again; just throw me another set.