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BP70

My name is Thomas. I killed myself when I was ten. At least I was convinced I had. I thought I was gone forever.

I didn’t kill me the ten-year-old. I killed me the younger boy inside. He was bad. He hated his father and everyone else and he wanted to hurt me.

I killed the primitive boy in me, but he still comes back to haunt me.

I hate my mother, also. I can’t have needs because she is so needy. My job every day since I was two is to keep her from breaking into a million pieces. She will fracture if anything stresses her out. She will disintegrate if I’m too much for her. When she feels threatened or weak, she goes into her room and sleeps all day. That scares me. I’m all alone.

I think she’s going to die one day.

The little boy’s job is also to keep mom from going away. She will leave if I upset her. She has threatened to leave many times. Once she packed her suitcase and disappeared for a short time. She did come back, but it felt like she had been gone forever. I trusted her even less when she came back, because now I knew she was capable of actually leaving. Next time, she will probably leave and not come back.

If she leaves, then both dad and mom will be gone. That terrifies me.

I feel so alone. Aloneness is the curse above all curses.

When I lock the boy inside, my body begins to go crazy. My head feels like it’s filled with boiling water. Sometimes, I’m convinced it’s my blood that’s boiling. I feel explosions in my chest. My ears get hot. My stomach gurgles. My legs get restless. My throat is tight—clamped shut. Am I trying to keep something out or something in?

I had to lock the little boy in the dungeon. He was violent. He had murderous thoughts toward me and others. He thought about school shootings. He was not one of the victims in my imaginations. He carried the gun.

I have learned that when my emotions and thoughts are encased in concrete, they ferment. They expand. They get bigger than I can control. Eventually, they leak out or want to explode out like a volcano. It is then that I feel like hurting my self.

Now I’m a grown man with a wife. I thought I had killed that dangerous boy fifteen years ago, but I now know he is still alive. What am I to do with him?

Why would God want to meet me in this crazy place? How can He enter this tomb called my heart? Won’t He leave me, too, when He finds out I’m too psycho? Too needy? Too bad?

My mother locked me out of the house when I was bad, and my father left because I was bad. Won’t Jesus do the same? Don’t I have to be good for Him to stay? But if I’m good, what do I do with the bad in me? The bad boy. He must go. He must die. He is too needy. He is evil. He is so angry. He is violent inside me. I must bury him; make him go away.

So, yes, he is still alive. I thought I had killed him, but someone besides me has seen him. Someone outside of me knows that he exists. No one at church knows what lives inside of me. But my counselor has heard his cry. He knows about the room where I locked the boy away and told him to shut up forever.

I can’t allow the boy out. He is too much. He wants to do self-harm. No, he doesn’t cut me or burn me, but he harms me inside. He feels too much pain and rage and makes my whole body hurt. He feels so sad and alone and lonely and I don’t know what to do with those excruciating emotions, so I just send him away. To feel nothing and be dead is better than to feel everything and be alone with it.

Will anyone hear my cry? One person finally did but now I’m scared. Do I want my cry to be heard? Do I want to open the door for the little boy to come out? He is too angry. He is too sad. He is too needy. He will destroy people or swallow them up or be bad and then they will leave like my father did.

I can’t let him out. Even my wife threatens to leave me because I’m too anxious and controlling when I’m not in the cemetery for bad boys and girls. Why would God ever stay if He encounters the appalling creature inside me?

Dad left when I was five. When he drove away, my stomach hurt so much I wanted to die. I didn’t eat for days. The worst of it is that I feel so guilty about it. I’m sure I made him leave. I was bad. I know for sure I was bad after he left because that’s when my hatred for him was born.

I don’t really know what I did wrong. All I know is that I had to send me away because the boy must have done something wrong and will do it again and other people will leave. It’s always me. It’s always my fault. I hurt people and make them go away.

I have some good memories of Dad before he left. He seemed to like me a little back then. I had a lot of fun playing hide and seek with him—in the whole house. I liked seeking better than hiding. My dad was good at hiding but I was a better seeker. I always found him.

Then he went away one day, and I couldn’t find him anywhere in the house. I looked for him for months in all his favorite hiding places before I finally accepted the terrible truth that he was gone. Why did he leave? What did I do wrong?

What makes it worse is that my father did not die. I would not feel the rejection if he was in the grave. The problem is that he could come back to me but he doesn’t. I’m not good enough for him. How could I have been so stupid to think he really loved me? I’m duped so easily. I’m an idiot and a fool. I was born bad but also as dumb as a board.

Now, as an adult, I dismiss my needs even with my wife. At least I try to—most of the time. I try to be a good husband, but I can’t even get that right. Like my mother, she has also left me when she was upset with me. Three times. Even more than my mother.

Sooner or later, everyone hurts me. I pursue them, but they don’t pursue me. All my friends eventually leave me. One ex friend told me I get hurt too easily. I’m not sure he was right. How does one know if he gets hurt too easily? If it hurts, it hurts.

I try not to hurt or need. If I need, I will be disappointed. Eventually. Always. By everyone. If I don’t expect anything, I will never be hurt. But my heart always betrays me. Is it the little boy I thought I had killed? He always gets hungry for attention and begins to attach to others hoping that this time things will be different.

They never are. Everyone leaves me. I hate it when people leave.

When I’m afraid my wife will leave me, I either pull away so it won’t hurt so much when she does walk out, or I cling more tightly to our relationship and then she feels controlled and wants her freedom. Both coping skills destroy relationship.

So, I kill my needs. I kill the little boy. I swallow my emotions. I make them go away. But then my body shouts. My ears, throat, chest, legs, stomach, heart, head—they all cry out. They all torture me with nonverbal messages. But how do I know what they’re saying?

My counselor hears my body speaking. He is helping me put words to my physical pain.

I do hate the little boy because my ex friend was right—the one who told me I get hurt too easily. But then I also hate others for hurting me. What am I to do?

When I was a boy, my hatred was expressed through fantasies of guillotining heads from bodies—my head and the heads of others.

As an adult, I don’t think about guillotining anymore, but I do think about cutting people off emotionally. Maybe it’s the same thing. One is literal and one is figurative, but they both accomplish the same end—severing relationships with others and also with myself.

I can even sever my relationship with God. Strong emotions destroy God—in my heart. I’m talking about primitive emotions that have the power to create a reality that is not reality in the outside world but that is reality in my head. Often, I think that the reality in my head is the true reality.

That’s when I begin to fear for my sanity. How does one know the difference between what is really real and what is reality constructed by my emotions? Is God dead or have I simply annihilated him in my private emotional world?

The reality in my head tells me that I need to take care of everyone else or they will leave me. I need to be nice and set no boundaries or they will be hurt. The inner reality also tells me that everyone will leave me sooner or later, so I try to control them so they won’t leave. I try to create a safe outside world for my little boy but in doing so, I force others to be who I need them to be. I demand it of them—at least inside of me.

People don’t like it when I do that. They feel constricted, like they can’t be themselves. And maybe they can’t. I need them to be who I need them to be, or I will panic and run away. I cannot allow them to make me feel scared or anxious because it is intolerable for me to experience that. But then, terribly, my attempts to make me feel safe make them feel controlled and then they want to leave me.

What am I to do? To let them be separate from me is to live in a constant state of panic because I know they will leave. But to control them makes them feel trapped and then they will eventually pull away from me and leave. I’m damned if I give them freedom and damned if I control them. What am I to do?

My only choices are to cut my heart off (kill myself) or cut off my connections to people (kill them). Then I won’t care what they do. But then I will never love them, either. I am condemned to be alone forever with repressed emotions that are so strong I must hurt myself to distract from their intensity.

I have learned over the years that everything that is hidden in the heart does not go away. Over time, hurt turns to anger. Anger turns to bitterness. Bitterness turns to contempt and rage. Contempt turns to annihilation. Somewhere along the way in that devolution, the heart grows hard until it is a stone. Beware of hardness of heart! Once cultivated, it is impossible to undo. Only one person can make the heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

I don’t think I’m capable of living in the outside world. My internal world is the place where I am practiced. (But it’s so dark in here.) The outside world is a place where I feel so inadequate. What am I supposed to say to others? How am I supposed to be? Who am I supposed to be? I don’t even know how to do small talk.

If I let myself be seen in the outside world, I will come across as being too needy. Then people will leave me just like my father did and like my mother threatened to do countless times. I have no idea what is too needy and what is appropriately needy. So, I err in the direction of needing nothing on the outside. Or maybe very little. But then my neediness leaks out sideways and my wife and ex friends complain about me.

Often, I choose to believe that their perceptions are wrong and that I’m just fine. It’s easier to think that they’re the problem, not me.

I can’t live with people, and I can’t live without them. (Maybe I can survive without them, or exist, but not live). It just has never worked with people. They keep hurting me. I feel betrayed or cut off by them.

What am I to do?

Stay inside and shut up. Don’t be me. Be someone else. Be fake. Starve to death inside. Die.

But when I stay in the dark dungeon, I get anxious because I’m so alone. I get angry because no one is there for me. My body cries out and tortures me and then I want to shut it up by hurting it, by punishing me.

How can Jesus help me? I know He died for me and that He says He loves me and that I have been adopted into his family, but none of these things comfort me when the fear and the anger and the total aloneness pour out of my inner volcano like hot lava. The words of the Bible are hollow to me at those times. God feels a million miles away. The immediacy of the intense emotion and the voices of the lies in my heart shout so loudly that I cannot hear God’s voice.

I understand why some people deconstruct their faith.

It is as if God is not real at those times. In the dungeon. In the place of exile. After the guillotine has fallen. After I get hurt or abandoned and pull away because the anticipation of loss feels like death to me.

Jesus, make yourself feel real to me. Please, I am pleading with you.

Do you still love me, or have you left me? Are you, too, rejecting me? My violent anger, my jealousy when my ex-friends spend time with others but not me, my hatred for everyone who hurts me—these must disappoint you deeply. Is my badness beyond even your love?

I am so untrusting. What is wrong with me? Jesus, help me to know when to distrust my distrust.

Wretched man that I am–who will save me from this living hell? How does the Holy Spirit penetrate the walls of my self-exile?

Occasionally, I stumble on something God said that wrecks me. Today was one of those days when the truth of God’s word was able to open a door in the fortress of my self-protection. In Deuteronomy 4, Moses says about God: For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.

To me, these words are like a cup of cold water in the desert! But how can I believe them when everyone has left me, including my own father? When I feel like I deserve to be destroyed because I am so bitter, so violent, so bad? When I feel forgotten by everyone—even my own wife?

Sometimes God’s words make me very angry because they don’t feel true. Oh, maybe they’re true for everyone else, but certainly not for me.

I desperately want to believe them because if they’re true, then there’s hope for me. Someday. Somewhere. Somehow.

But whenever I begin to have hope, I’m reminded of my deepest, darkest secret.

The man who touched me said I could never tell anyone what he did. He got angry with me and told me that I was a bad boy because I wanted him to touch me. He pointed a finger in my face and insisted that I belonged to Satan.

These words are still binding on me. I cannot speak . . . I am evil. Evil boys cannot have a voice.

In the end, I am torn. I believe—or try to believe—in my head that Jesus loves me and died for all people (even me) and that He is a friend of sinners and that He came for those who need a physician. When I hear these words, I want to run into His arms and let Him hug me tight and tell me that He chose me and wants me and will never leave me.

Most of the time, I cannot run to him. I am chained to the dungeon wall, the dark place where I banished the boy so many years ago. He is a prisoner. He is shackled to darkness. I have been taken captive and I cannot escape.

Jesus, you said you came to set the prisoner free! Please set me free, too. On my own, I am powerless.

My emotions are too violent. They are a tsunami in my chest. Who could ever contain the rage and the desire to do violence? I have given my life to Jesus and yet I feel these things within me. How can I be a child of God when my insides are so chaotic, and I am filled with such destructive jealousy? Again, wretched man that I am!

I have been diagnosed with OCD and some type of personality disorder. I’ve been prescribed several psychotropic medications. But what is inside of me feels so much bigger than my thoughts and my brain. It is my heart, my soul, my whole being that roar with emotion and neediness. What cries out within me is non-material. It is spiritual. Medications only dull what I feel and tranquilize the hungry beast within me.

When I go to church, I hide the person I am inside. I believe that I will be judged by others whose insides appear normal. Maybe even more than that, I fear that no one will understand what goes on inside me, that I will be alone with the internal chaos forever. Few things are scarier for me than thinking that no one in the world will ever hear the boy inside or understand his language.

Thankfully, Jesus said that He will be with me even in the valley of the shadow of death. That dark valley is my soul.

Jesus, help my counselor to understand my heart. I pray that he will be able to translate the language of the little boy and speak to him in a way that he will know he’s not alone. I need someone to reassure me that I’m not too much, because I’m too much for me and apparently too much for my wife. Yes, send me someone who will dare enter my private suffering and discover why I am so angry and love me even in my badness and never leave me even when they see how broken I am.

Your presence radiating from another person will call me out into the world. I cannot heal in the place of exile where I languish alone.

I hear the sermons. I sing the songs. I pray to you daily, Jesus. But I feel like a bad Christian. Sometimes I don’t feel like a Christian at all.

I know you entered our world through the incarnation when you were born in the form of our flesh and wore our skin. Please, now, enter the heart of my little boy in a form that I can receive even if that means sending a father or brother to me with skin on who can be a little Christ to me.

You will have to send a special person, Lord. I will keep them at arm’s length, and they will experience me as shallow and boring. I will get prickly when I feel hurt and will attempt to push them away. I will need them more than I should at times, and they will be tempted to pawn me off onto someone else.

Send someone who won’t be fooled by my low maintenance or run away when I’m high maintenance.

I need help, Jesus. I’m desperate to be seen and loved. I might be able to accept their boundaries if I know they’re staying and not leaving.

Please don’t send me a religious person who is all doctrine and shoulds. Send me someone who knows how to be present with me as a bearer of your unconditional love. Someone who knows that the journey toward faith is a war. Someone who knows how to be a mini-Immanuel. God with us.

God with me.

Please, Jesus. Please. Love me through their love.

The little boy needs someone sent by you.

Let love be genuine . . . Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor ~ Romans 12:9,10

And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you ~ Matthew 5:41,42