There's a room in my soul that's filled with pain. I've kept it locked up because pain makes me weak, and I can't bear to be weak. When pain happens to me now I deal with it rather than shoving it into the room, but there are years and many horrible experiences in that room, many that I never even processed enough to realize that they exist.

I've always been the strong one. I've always been the one people relied on -- my parents relied on me to take care of my siblings, my mother relied on me to tell her what to do and convince her that she was worthy, my father relied on me to make wonderful grades so that he'd have something to be proud of his kids about, my friends relied on me to be there for them (which is healthy, except that most of the time they weren't there for me), I relied on myself to keep myself from falling apart, Ben relies on me to work and make a money cushion so that we aren't merely surviving hand-to-mouth...

I've never allowed myself to rely on anyone else, not really. Relying on someone means that if they don't come through, something is amiss -- I rely on people, but keep enough distance that if they don't come through, I say to myself, 'oh well, you knew better than to trust them, let's build an invisible wall.' Because I am so much more open than most people that I can build walls that they can't see -- I feel distance, but they don't. And then I either slowly paint the wall so that they're blocked out, or I tear it down again.

I'm at a crossroads now. I can either continue to yank the door open, snatch out a bit of pain, slam the door shut and work out that one bit... or I can open the door and not shut it and be overwhelmed and drowned and crushed by the pain, until I've felt it all and there is nothing left to fear. I can either spend the rest of my life trying to do it gradually while it slowly kills me, or I can be weak, let my guard down, and be useless for a time. And I know I will be useless. I don't know how long, but I know it will break me down.

I sound matter-of-fact, but this is the most painful ambivalence I've ever experienced. I've gotten past fear of the pain itself -- now all that's holding me back is fear of being useless, broken, and unreliable for a time. Fear of trusting in God and Ben to take care of me. It seems so puny and silly a fear as I write it down. I want so badly to not have to be a responsible adult; I want to be the one that gets taken care of... I'm sick of being responsible for everything, but I'm deathly afraid of letting go.