Survive

sent in by Crystal

I wander about in the world I'm a stranger to, a world I know nothing about.
I question everything from the beginning to the end, I have no idea what came before me or what will come after me.

I have garbled memories in the far distances of my mind, of things I should believe,
I just don't remember what they are anymore, I can't decipher them. Did I know at one time what path I should take? Was there a place and a time in my life when things made sense, when I knew who I was?

You sit and you judge me, slandering my choices, perhaps my beliefs, not knowing what makes one choose the path they take or the decisions they make.

The one thing I know is that your condemnation can only be traced back to yourselves. You gave me no foundation to live by other than an unrealistic fantasy that borders on perfection, which is impossible to achieve. You sheltered me from reality and then thrust me into it, expecting me to survive. How can I survive in a world I know so little about. You did this, and then you wonder in your own minds, as you critisize, judge and shake your heads in disapproving shame, why it turned out this way, why I turned out this way.

You hid every truth from me except the ones you wanted me to believe. You hid from me that life is hard, that love is harder. You didn't tell me how hard parenting is, how ruthless and cold hard times are. You didn't tell me that not every love is the right love and that not every touch is a good touch.

You left out the best parts and the worst parts of life and I had to figure them out on my own. And you question why sometimes I don't do things the best or most conventional way. Why do I have to learn every lesson the hard way. I feel like every step I take is the first one because I've had to take them on my own, with no
teaching or foreshadowing of things to come, just a blind person stepping into the middle of a crowded street, and you have the audacity to stay in your perfect bubble and turn your reproach on me because I fall down when I get ran over.

Don't you dare judge me. Don't you dare look down on me. I've done the best I can with the guidance I had.

I choose not to live like you. I choose not to raise my children the way you did. I chose to walk a different path that you, not the wrong path, just a different one. I've stumbled around, falling down and getting up again and again for ten years, and I'll continue to get up, because you're not really down until you stop getting up.

And I'll always think of the things I can do different that you so my children will not stumble around and fall like I have, they will not face the pain of outlandish expectations. I will not throw them into an environment they are strangers to and expect them to survive.

There are so many days I pray just to make it through it, not to prosper, just to be able to exhale at the end of it. And Inhale again the next morning and start again,
muddling through it and thankful for the chance to try.

City: Clarksville
State: Tennessee
Country: USA
Became a Christian: Birth
Ceased being a Christian: 18
Labels before: Pentecostal
Labels now: Agnostic
Why I joined: Family
Why I left: Life

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