a sacrifice of vulnerability

It's been a while.

Be forewarned: you might need your rose-coloured glasses toward the end.

This whole thing was sparked by my intention to get on here and shame the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower. (If you haven't seen it, know that there are spoilers in this post.) I planned it throughout the entire movie because I thought it was going to be like every other movie. I thought this poor kid was gonna fall in love with this poor girl and she was going to totally miss it and treat him badly and then realize it toward the end and that would be that - requited love, which is rare and frustrating to watch - and I was going to ask insightful questions about what that movie says about what our culture is telling us about love, and then the end happened.

You wanna know why I watch movies? I watch movies for the moments that open me up. You are wrong: I could not be doing better things with my time. I live to feel raw and awake and alive to the Story - the story of brokenness and redemption.

Like the part when this kid's parents find out what his aunt did to him, and his dad walks in to his son's room in the psychiatric ward and walks up to him and takes his head in his hands and kisses his forehead. You just have to see the movie because the whole time his dad is this disinterested non-person, and then this, this understanding! This gentle. encompassing. closeness.

The big questions now are not for you or for our culture. They're for me. Like: What happened to me that makes me seek out sickness? Why is it I want to be like that kid? I was way too young when I was introduced to sexuality, but I wasn't abused like he was. 

I just want to be understood, you know? Yeah. I want to walk next to be people who get it. This kid finds a group of people who get it, and that rings this big bell of longing inside of me.

But the sickness... you wanna know something? I was relieved, six years ago, when a psychiatrist told me there was a strong possibility I was developing schizoaffective disorder, but it's not for the reasons I used to think. I used to think I just wanted to be sick, to be lazy, to have excuses. I mean those could be part of it, but the real, deep undercurrent was that I could maybe, now, be free to be me. I thought schizoaffective disorder would provide a lens through which I could finally see myself clearly. I thought it could explain the darkness inside me.

But I don't think that's all of it, either. When I came home from that appointment, my sister was the first person I told - I didn't want Mom and Dad in the room with me when that psychiatrist told me because I didn't know what her diagnosis would be (or maybe I didn't want them to hear that I wasn't ADD, that I didn't have an excuse for totally failing at college) - and when I did, when I told my sister, she just hugged me and said, "I knew there was something else going on." 

But what was it? What else was going on? It wasn't schizoaffective disorder. I always felt different, but I know now that I'm not.

That's the point here: We've all got the same story. We're all trying to fill the big impossible holes inside of us. I've always felt different but I'm not. I am seriously - but not fatally, oh no, thank you, Jesus - narcissistic. Or I was.

The Gospel really is wonderful. 

I was led to pray recently that God would restore the innocence I had when I was three, because when I was four, it was gone. I was that young. (That would certainly qualify as an answer to those questions.) I didn't understand it at the time. I understood that I had to hide it from Mom and Dad, and as I grew older, I became so. ashamed. so full of guilt.

You know what opened me up? Another person's honesty. Michael's honesty. He told me what happened to him, and I thanked God at that moment that at least my offender was only a little bit older than me and that she was a she.

What is going on in the quiet?

I'm not trying to scare y'all, really, but we have to be serious from time to time. We have to ask ourselves these questions. And if I'm not vulnerable about all of this like Michael was, you might not ever see it in yourself. You might not ever come out and ask the questions which are eating you alive because you don't even know they exist. You might not ever talk to someone about it. 

And if that's you, you have to. You have to talk to someone about it.