“I don’t even know if I believe / Everything you’re trying to say to me / So open up my eyes / Tell me I’m alive.” ~ Believe by Mumford & Sons

If labels are to be used in an identifying way, then I lean on one: I am made and loved by God…

With that being said, I have been going through a bout of depression as of late, brought upon by facing myself in the mirror and being open and honest with myself, God, and others. I am not where I thought I’d be at in my life at this time. I have a great job, I am financially afloat, I live on my own…on my own…and I want to say that’s what has me unraveled quite a bit.

You see, I’ve been a father before; I was engaged to my best friend who was a single mother of 2, and when I thought everything was going smoothly life threw a curve ball and in one Friday afternoon I lost my best friend, my fiancee, my 2 sons, my family.

I have made peace with my hurt and hostility towards the girl I intended to marry, I send her my prayers and my light and my love, but there is still a part of me that hasn’t healed / found resolution: I don’t know how to be truly intimate with another human being in the context of a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.

Yes I am intimate with my friends, they know of my hurts and doubts and questions and reality of where I’ve been and where I am, but that connectedness that can only be found in a dating relationship us non-existent in my life at this current time. I do realize there’s apprehension on my part to put myself out there to a girl, to expose myself warts and all, and to even live with what I put out there causes me to wonder if I will ever love again and if I will ever be loved again.

I am proactive in my own ways, but I should do more (mea culpa, I know I am breaking my rule of “shoulding” myself.) and yet it can be daunting inasmuch as it is exciting…which ironically is what scares the hell out of me as well as what drives me.

And lately when I talk to God about all this, I feel separated from her and separated from myself. I don’t feel like I’m a hypocrite or even hypocritical for talking to God during this “darkness of the soul”, but the lack of hearing back from God makes me feel a bit lonelier than usual. I know she’s listening but given that prayer is essentially communication with the divine and to have that absent from my life in the now.

Yet I realize now as I have in the past that God is still God, she’s still faithful when I am without faith, she’s still a source of hope when I am hopeless, and there is grace when I am graceless… I might feel alone, I might feel an unraveling of my soul, but I am still here, still present before God with all that plagues me; whether self-induced or others.

I am frayed, I am worn out, I am tired beyond physical, but I will keep going and being and doing because I know with every atom of my body that I will get there…and it all starts with here.

~Nathanael~