Salt Stained Rain

After a while, people stop wanting to hear about what you’ve been through. And I feel guilty talking about it half the time anyway, because I doubt my memories, and even when I stand firm, people still don’t believe me.

My birth family surely doesn’t. They called me a liar, a lover of drama and negative attention. Because that’s so like me. Loud, lying, negative attention seeking me.

Or is it? Is this truly all my fault?

I read your email: “You are dividing our house. And we cannot stand because of you.”

Then I think, No, I’m not responsible for what happened to me as a helpless child.

Then I think, Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

To say that my past pain and those who broke me are ever far from my mind is false. Even when I think I’m not thinking about them, they find me in my dreams.

And the darkness rolls in on the east and I shrivel inside. I wake up emotionally spent with a sore throat. Then a cough. I’ll need a day or two in bed. I’ll stand in the shower for an hour and forget to use soap. I’ll see my biological mother reflected in every mirror in my house and worry that I’m becoming more like her every day.

The dreams and the darkness make love in my head while my family trips over me and I’ll pinch myself until I bleed because it’s just a little thunderstorm and it can’t last forever. Right?

And the God who restores the barren, desolate ground can surely make something beautiful with even salt stained rain.