The Gaza Strip in me is a land ravaged by confusion, pain and profound suffering.
It is a land that, until now, I have been unwilling to see.
"If I don't look, then it doesn't exist."
There are nice green hills and the pretty houses, like in my dream.
There is only what I can see through my rose tinted glasses.
My work now is to take off the rose tinted glasses.
Face my fear. Open the door to the Gaza Strip and feel the pain, the anguish that IS life. The anguish that has drained my life by avoiding, by denying it's existence.
Facing the fear is my only hope.
It's All or nothing.
Facing this fear means saying yes to ALL of me, accepting more than the carefully compartmentalized aspects of my psyche that are 'acceptable'.
Accepting the whole picture of my ravaged soul:
I am a soul that fell hard from His grace - was terrified to walk the earth - couldn't bear life without Him - but found myself here, in the barren world of earth - with fallable parents - a mother hysterical and unable to love - a father more concerned with values and ideas than love - and siblings, each with their own failings.
I was a solo ship. Lost, completely lost.
Slowly, life constructed itself around me, despite myself. Slowly I came to believe that this constructed life was life itself. I learned that behaving in certain ways seemed to get me what I seemed to want. All this was fabricated for one purpose - to prevent me from seeing myself as I truly am:
A passionate woman who feels deeply JOY and PAIN and wants to walk with His hand on the stearn.
This is who I really am.
Facing my fear means facing ALL of me, all of my potential life with Him. All of Him.
The Gaza Strip in me feels so primal - feels like the pain that wretched me from His love, even before I was born into the confusion and profound dissappointment in the world of my birth family.
The Gaza strip in me feels like heaving, wretched isolation.
The Gaza Strip in me is my heart broken, broken and bleeding.
There is no making sense of of this pain - Gaza Strip pain goes back through eons of Hurt upon Pain upon Hurt upon Pain.
I have been terrified of feeling this pain. It is not safe to feel this pain in the world - I have lived so profoundly entwined with the world. Pathology has taken steel strong threads and carefully woven a web that keeps me bound, attached to the ways of the world.
This web needed to be woven just to keep me in the world - it was my only way to stay - because seeing and feeling this pain was too much - because facing my fear of this pain was too much for me to bear. Too much for me to bear.
And right now, the only thing that is real, is true, is me sitting, facing this fear. Taking off the rose tinted glasses and seeing the truth.
Gaza Strip.