Silent Screaming

There is one thing that God can't change...and that's the past. Ironically there is one thing I spend most of my time thinking about...the past. That's my nature. That's human nature...and human nature left unchecked seems to constantly fall back into yesterday. If I don't deliberately and sometimes relentlessly pull my mind up to where my feet are planted then I'm out living in last year. I'm getting high, I'm stealing everything, I'm using everybody, and I'm dieing. Even without being enslaved to a substance I can feel exactly how I used to if I let my mind stay there.

Physically there are houses, streets, and people I simply can't be around. Mentally there are areas, emotions, and thoughts; places I can't go into if I'm expecting to take my sobriety and my sanity back out with me. It's crucial for myself and anyone else in the life reconstruction business to remember two things; learn from the past...then get the hell out of there. It's also crucial to take another person there with you.

It isn't a coincidence that there are people everywhere. It isn't a coincidence that in order for us to isolate we actually have to put forth effort into finding a place away from everyone else. God created people to live in community. We thrive when we're together...not alone. Two will always be stronger together than one is on its own.

Every problem I've ever had that I didn't talk honestly with another person about became colossal. I was terrified of being criticized so I said nothing, I did nothing, and I turned into...nothing. Simple feelings like fear, anger, and doubt turned into depression, the unmanageability I felt around food turned into an eating disorder, and drinking on the weekends to escape myself turned into IV drug addiction. All of those end results could have been avoided had I used my voice.

Taking any issue we're facing out of our mental world and verbalizing it into the physical one really does cut the problem in half. I used to think that was "speaking it into existence"...but it's not. If it's already in our head it already exists and replaying that same thought over and over and over again is very quickly going to turn a piece of our life into our entire life.   

Behind every problem is a lack of communication. The people around us right now...are the people we need right now. There's no sense in looking into the future or into the past trying to find them. They're here. All we have to do is speak from our hearts... God will do the rest.