a real glimpse inside...

I can't sleep... its 4 am and I am supposed to go to church at 10 tomorrow. I'm miserable. I can't help feeling like I've screwed up my relationships. I lie there and wonder. At the very beginning, I tried to put God at the steering wheel of all my relationships. I turned away a really sweet boy because I thought I heard God saying no, he was meant for someone else, not me. I was meant for someone else, not him. I tried to listen to God in every decision I made regarding my heart, who I allow myself to love. But somewhere along the line, I think my voice got mixed into the chaos. I can't remember what God's voice sounds like. I can't remember if He approved of the guys I've dated, or the one I'm with.

A friend of mine told me once her parents offered to arrange a marriage for her (her culture accepts the practice) and she turned them down adamantly because she wanted to decide who she would marry. I'm not a history major, but I am also not an idiot when it comes to history. I know that a lot of marriages sealed alliances between houses, or countries. Marrying for love was only a recent thing. Why should I bother with relationships when thousands of women years ago just got married when they had to? They didn't need love in order to be happy and have children and comfort their husbands when things were hard.

I once thought the reason I haven't been happy in a long time was the fault of someone in particular. But I've been pushing the blame on someone else. I'm the reason I haven't been happy in a long time. I have not been true to myself. I have not been listening to God but I have not been asking God, because somehow, I managed to convince myself that God wasn't enough. That there was so much more out there.

I told myself once that no matter what happened, no matter how much I burned myself, that I would never regret the things I did because there's still something beautiful in the burning, in the experience, in the learning and growing and even making memories from it. But right now... I almost ALMOST regretted not rekindling the first fire because it meant the second and third would not have happened. But then I thought about what my life would be like with that first fire warming me, and I felt so cold and alone, and kicked myself for coming so close to regret.

But still, I can talk and ramble all I want here and it won't change the fact that going to church doesn't help me hear God's voice any more than it helps me hear the tooth fairy. Somewhere, deep down inside, there's a shred of me that still holds fast to the old days. The days when I visited heaven in my dreams, and walked with angels, and heard God telling me when and where and what to pray for. But surrounding that shred, are a hundred thousand sides of me that can't remember God's voice, that doesn't know if He exists, that has despaired so long it no longer cares.

How I miss the old days.