Avoidance

I am an avoider, an excuse maker. I feel the heat of the fire and I back off.  In my last post, I talked about forgiveness and the need for finding it.  I sat and contemplated what all of this meant to me and I did not write it down.  That was by design.  Oh not my intentional design, my sabotaging brain design.  I feel like if I write it on the paper it is more real.  Then I have to look at it and not just think about it.  Thoughts can be pushed aside, words on a page are more concrete for me.

So instead of focusing on the flame and walking straight into the fire to confront what I know I have been avoiding, instead I made poor choices to avoid.  I had to pressure wash the driveway and wash the sheets and see a few old friends.  I was too tired or too busy.  But I know that in all of those excuses at the end of the long day, sits that part of my brain tapping its toes in my ear, begging to be dealt with.  I probably expend more energy fighting it, fleeing from the fire, than just sitting down and moving carefully through it.  But I apparently don’t learn. 

This behavior of avoidance has long been in my play book.  It is why I can’t move forward and I know it.  But I continue to do it.  It is what I know.  What I am used to. What comforts me.  Confronting what is eating me is never easy.  It involves tears and pain.  I would rather pressure wash my driveway.  But in the end, it is the confrontation I need.  The honest, raw, unfiltered presence in my own life.  I need to be able to peek behind the curtain and figure out how all of this works, or in my case does not work. 

I am so absolutely broken right now.  I am so lost I don’t even know what this entry is right now.  I am just forcing myself to type words.  Words and feelings.  But I don’t even know what my feelings are.  The same feeling as always, I guess.  Anger. Fear. Disillusionment. The only way out of these feelings is to understand them and confront them.  Otherwise, I am going to be living a perpetual groundhog day, trapped in this unending cycle of the same. 

I need to stop avoiding.  No matter how uncomfortable it is.  No matter how much I cry. No matter how much the things I dredge up hurt.  Avoidance is killing me.  It is what allows me to overeat and what allows me to ignore the fixes. It is why I put food in my mouth when I am not hungry.  Because when I am eating, I am not thinking about the things I am avoiding.  I just thinking about the food. 

I need to stop running and start confronting.  Come hell or high water the next entry will be about my path to forgiveness.  I must do that. It is the raging fire now on my horizon and like the mountain, the only way is through it.