2,190 Deaths Later

It's been a fight to get where I am now.  In the last six years I have gruelingly struggled over my insecurities, juggling them in my mind until I finally decided to let all of the balls drop.  For so long I was like an anorexic, constantly checking the proverbial mirror to see what shape I was in.  I got so tired of myself that I just smashed the mirror into a million pieces.  Then I saw the many different fragments of myself and wasn't even sure which pieces to pick up;  which pieces were my own.  That was the day I was massacred.

I decided in that moment that I was done trying to figure my life out.  I was done picking up illegitimate pieces and claiming them as my own.  I was tired and depressed, stressed out and bored with my life and I didn't want to go on pretending that everything was okay.  In fact, it was impossible for me to convince myself it was okay because it was too obvious to ignore, the lie no longer worked.  So I began to unlayer all of the weird collages I had made of myself to expose the original piece of art that was truly an expression of me.
There's this temptation that says that to be loved and accepted, you have to be what's expected of you.  One of the many issues with this thinking is that everyone has different expectations and so you really end up making yourself feel confined and schizophrenic.  When you fall into this thinking, it overwhelms you and those thoughts stay so intact and fragile because you, along with the person "loving you," both know that it's conditioned, manipulated, contrived, and fraudulent.  So you become enabled to be something you're not, just to get something in return that wasn't real in the first place.
Well, that was my whole life before the massacre.  I felt like nobody got me, or appreciated my individuality.  I felt like I was cast into this very small space, and like a jack-in-the-box, I was only allowed to come out if it were someone else's hand manipulating the lever.  When I killed all of the alterations I had made of myself to appease the gods of acceptance, I was finally able to breathe again without the nauseating smell of burning incense and my charred flesh upon their altar.  And although I was freed of the necessity to strive, I paradoxically felt lost, directionless.  I no longer knew what to do with myself.  I knew basic things about myself;  likes and dislikes, desires that I had since I was young, but I didn't know who I was or whose I was.  Identity is profoundly wrapped in those two questions, and those were the two I was completely and utterly baffled by.
What helped answer those questions was time spent listening, quieting myself;  ridding myself of my own opinions and just accepting what God was telling me.  I was so lost that I was easily led, and so directionless that I readily followed the clues that helped lead the way out.  I was emptying myself of everything that made me feel important or recognized or identifiable to the mirage that I was.  I was simply listening and flogging all of the parts of me that needed it.  I've never missed those parts of myself either.  I've never taken myself through death regretting any of it.  I am only freer, happier, stronger.
I went from self-absorption to daily killing my self-importance.  I was translated from a dark mind, to one that is daily coming to an understanding of what it's like not to be first.  God has been showing me who I am...and who I'm not for that matter.  He has shown me that he knows me more intimately than I know myself.  He has known me since I have been a thought in his heart and mind.  I have only known myself for the amount of years that I have consciously been able to recognize myself as an individual, aside from parents, siblings, and friends.  He knows the hairs on my head, I do not.  He knows every thought, however fleeting.  I don't even know where those thoughts come from or what wind they catch on their way out.  I have no clue how my body works on a day-to-day basis, yet God crafted it with his bare hands.  So I thought it best to ask God what was in my heart. 
Everyday, every death, every attempt to put myself last, is a better idea of what's in store of the heart of God and the heart that he has instilled in me.  I've pursued myself for so long, and it grew tiresome and unfruitful.  I have searched God out, abandoning myself, and have miraculously found both Him and I;  two vital questions being answered and matured every single day.
Life holds so much more adventure when it is a daily search.  It's less overwhelming to think about today, than the thousand suns that lay ahead.  There have been many deaths in my life, and there are many to come, and I welcome them all.
I had a vision of myself standing on a hill.  Suddenly, I burst into a thousand pieces.  All that remained were my worn shoes, no real remnant of who I was.  Initially, I was scared.  Again, reverting back to my own self-importance, justifying momentarily all of the good that I hold.  And then I got it!  I realized that all of the illegitimate pieces were the ones that shattered;  all of the pieces I had put into place by my own hand.  My foundation was firm, my feet were still intact.  And what once was threatening and scary made me thankful all the more that God will shatter everything that can shatter.
I want to leave a trail that doesn't create a path to me.  I want to leave clefts in the dirt that are steady, unwavering, and unselfishly lovely.  Although there are many things to rebuild, I am thankful that the only part of me that is still alive, is intentioned by Him and not by my own doing.  I would rather have a little of me with a lot of work to go, than a lot of me with no room for growth.  After all, it was the pieces of my own shattered mirror that kept cutting me.
God does not make an alternate path.  He is not a plan b, second rate God!  He died for humanity so that they could be restored to the status of human beings.  He is a God of violent love, who has let himself die for an enemy.  So, I've reasoned, "Why can't I let myself die a thousand deaths for a friend?"