Everybody's got a dark side...

I always feel like a sulking teenager when I hear a song on the radio and the lyrics speak to me in some way and I find myself humming along, thinking, yes...she/he totally gets me.  Since I'm not nearly as cool as I once was - after hearing a song just like I've described, I usually have to Google it to find out what the song was and who the singer is.  This time it was Kelly Clarkson - the original American Idol - and my personal favorite.  The girl can sing and I typically like anything that she puts out there.

Her latest release "Dark Side" started me thinking about my own dark side.  That dark side of me that I constantly have to manage, control, tramp down, ignore, tell off, etc., etc., and so on.  The dark side of me that instead of trying to find ways to mourn for Grace as "the date" approaches, I start the self punishment cycle.  Instead of prayer, I torture myself with videos and choice websites.  There are parts of the song that really cut to the quick when she talks about revealing her dark side to the one she loves, will they run away, will they stay, even if she pushed them out, will they remind her of who she really is.  She pleads for them to remind her who she really is.

Oh - have I done what she sings about.  Pushing people as far as I can is a fine tuned hobby of mine.  There are less than a handful of people in this world who I know love me unconditionally and on whose love I cling to for life itself.  Heading up this intimate crowd is He who loves me with a love that (I'm paraphrasing) surpasses all understanding.  But, I push Him too.

Sometimes I push because I just really want to be left alone, but only for a little bit of time, just for some breathing room.  Other times I push because I want to see if I can really get them to leave.  Most of the time I push because I just want to hear the words, "I'm never going to leave you."  Maybe simply asking for reassurance would be easier?  Asking for it, however, makes me feel weak.  It's like asking someone to tell you they love you.  You aren't supposed to ask for it.  You're supposed to wait to hear it.  I've spent half a lifetime searching for love in all the wrong ways.  Now I've found it and have it in the most truest and purest ways possible for some time now, but yet I doubt, I test, I wonder.  I know that my husband and children love me.  My husband shows me in a million different ways just how much he loves me.  Actions are supposed to mean so much more than words, but sometimes, the words are all I need if they are the right ones.  How do you tell the people closest to you what you desperately need to hear?  

I read somewhere that a trauma in someone's life kind of leaves them stuck at the age they were when the trauma occurred.  For me, that would be 17.  Sometimes I still feel 17, as if the rest of my life, even the good parts, never really happened, and I'm still alone, in my room, listening to the radio.