I want to walk with my scars bared to the world.

Tonight I feel alone. I feel guilty even saying that. You know I love my husband, you know I love my life...I'm tired of feeling guilty every time the emptiness creeps in. Tonight, I am lonely and depressed...and I'm allowing myself to feel like this. I worry now about things I didn't have the strength to worry about before. I worry about what people will think if I admit how I feel...I worry about the feelings I might hurt, the concern I might cause. Every one in a while I'd like to just let it out. I'd like to just have some time to feel what I need to feel and not worry about what everyone else is going to think. Funny, I look how I want, but I'm scared to feel how I want...

Sometimes...I just want to lay out my life story. I want to say 'Look at my life. See what I've done. See who I was'. I'm not sure why. I think sometimes I want someone to accept that. Not that there aren't people that have already placed those things in the past and forgiven me...but sometimes I feel as if those things are not just in my past, but are a part of me now. They are an indelible print on my being, a scar that I bury every day under a mess of color and sound...no one can see, it's covered, it's hidden. I hate that I'm scared to mention it. Is it ok to tell this person? Perhaps that's it...I want to walk around with this scar naked and bare to the world; I want to say 'Here I am. This is me. This is what I look like and who I am'. Maybe I don't even have to be accepted...I just want to feel free of what I never intended to be a secret.

Too bad there aren't words to communicate this scar. Bipolar? Manic depression...years of living in the dark. Even memories SEEM dark, like there literally was a dimmer light back then. I was miserable. I was suicidal, I hated my life and was somewhere between too strong and too weak to kill myself. There aren't words to explain that. There aren't words to explain the desperation. I did anything, anything I could just to make it stop. I did anything, things I can only spend the rest of my life regretting...things I can never allow myself to forget. Things that left deep and ugly scars right along side every emotional mark, every self inflicted wound, every word carved into skin...

I want to walk with my scars bared to the world.