I wrote a post yesterday and then deleted it. Not because the post was in some way untruthful. Not because the post was in some way inappropriate for young viewers but rather because the post was filled with the rantings of a very angry woman.

I have learned that I have a temper; both my children and my husband have felt it. And like all real tempers it tends to be not only unfair but disgusting in its harm. While I am in no way a good person, I work very hard to be one at least on the surface. I work hard to not cause harm despite the ease in which I do so. I don’t like to hurt people in my more sane moments but it is an ability I have and know. Back me in a corner, make me feel less, bring to me your lies and your inability to find in yourself love, and I will come out swinging.

I erased the post when I realized what it was I was writing. I erased it when I realized that my husband would read the words and not understand my need to let it all out but instead would react with hurt and abused emotions by the very things that I desperately needed to say. The post should have been titled, “Those Things Best Left Unsaid.” So I walked away from it.

The act of walking away from my writing doesn’t change the fact that I am angry. The act of not pressing that all important publish button doesn’t change the fact that I have entered into a time of depression and apathy that characterizes the disease that God gave me. Despite the knowledge that what I wrote yesterday was hurtful didn’t make it a lie. It was a truth. A truth that is still real today.

I have messed up in the last eighteen months. I am not sure where it started and I don’t know the solution of fixing this wrong but I live with the very real knowledge that it is there. There is a truth about my life that has made me so angry as to be almost impotent; a truth about the person that I have become that has torn me to those little bits that poets love to sing about.

The truth is simple: somewhere along the way I have truly and completely disappointed myself. Oh, how I wish I could blame it on someone else. How I wish that I could simply walk away and move on and therefore fix the situation that I find myself in but it isn’t possible.

Like everyone I had dreams about who and what I was and would become once upon a time. I once dreamed of a career, of a life that gave to my children instead of taking away from them, and of a partnership between my adored husband and my own heart. I once dreamed of pride and of the ability to stand up straight. I once believed that I could be exactly what I wanted to be and the only thing that would stop me was my own dreams. My own list of life accomplishments was made in hope and happiness.

I am not what I once dreamed I could be. I am so much less. I am not a functioning member of a society that would shelter me in the strongest storms and I am not the heroine of the story I made in my head over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I believe I tried, but somewhere along the way I failed. And the anger towards my own self for becoming that which sits here typing today is as frustrating as it is real. The fault lies not in the world at large, but simply deep inside myself.

I once dreamed of going to a job everyday. I didn’t need to be highly successful but I always imagined I would be something my parents could be proud of. I once dreamed of giving to my children the cultural, historical, and plain fun adventures that would broaden who and what they become. I once dreamed of being able to give my husband a less stressful environment, a place not of just love but of enjoyment as well. I have failed on all these accounts. And the fault lies deep within me.

I once dreamed that I could give this world more than the rantings and tears of my own soul. I once dreamed that I could be someone that helps, that gives more than I take. I once believed in the impossibility of a disease beating me, of a bad day taking me down, of the rhythm of this life destroying me so that I gave up the hope that I would like to hold onto. I once believed that goodness could fight the battles of life and give to this world a safe haven that we all deserve.

I listen to the words about the sun shining again, and the fact that no matter what I do there will be a tomorrow and I wonder what it is that I do that deserves even the slightest moment of that promise. I wonder why the world continues to spin when the weight of my mistakes and my own disappointments seem to make it unimportant. Almost as if the fact that the earth spins knowing that I am attached to it is somehow wrong. The sun coming and going is in direct opposition to what we know about the theory of space and time. The weight of nothing should affect the world as easily as the weight of something grand.

I imagine that there will come a day when I will ignore these feelings once more. I will push down the realizations of my own uselessness and find a way to sing with the robins flying so colorfully by. I will ignore those that I cannot compete with and those that I cannot give to and live a life without purpose purposefully. I will go here once more and I will go back again.

And even though I know that there is a possibility that the person I am dying to become is possible, the truth is I will ignore it. Maybe that is selfishness. Maybe that is the very real realization that no matter what I become I will come to this moment again in my life. I will see myself forever as less than that great theater once promised that I could star in and I will forever see myself as small in the face of the truth. This is who I am; the disappointment that comes from the knowledge that the fall was my own foot walking off that cliff of promise.