in the desert...

Sheer, pure, exhaustion at its finest. Fatigued. Drained. Burnt out. Dead. Apathetic. Indifferent. Zoned. Blank.

I have a client who lost a father, and her affect is flat. She can be joyful or bored and still appear the same. I wonder if it's a continuation of such potent care and empathy and emotion that she got to the point that it becomes too much energy to show any emotion. To fully feel anything. It eventually comes to a point that it's easier just to float through life and neglect to feel at all.

It makes me want to jump up and down and scream obscenities at Satan. She's only 8. It's not fair. And yet, two decades her senior, I am struggling with the same thing, and with a living father. It's a difficult contradiction of the self to be so exhausted that care disappears but to still care that others are hurt by your not caring. EVERY effort feels like picking up a concrete block. EVERY move wears me down. It's easiest to be fake, but when the opportunity arises to take off my mask and expose how I feel, I only disappoint.

I feel lost in a whirlwind of despair. Despair over lost opportunities, dying relationships, diminishing effort. And yet as I look upon myself, I am standing on the ground in the middle of the cyclone, screaming in an inaudible, desperate, child-like voice. Part of me is dying, and part of me is grasping to find anything to hold on to.

Lord, I cry in desperation. Help me through this pit of the desert. Help me overcome the thirst of the parched soul longing for water. Rescue me from the lost life I am becoming. I pray to You and You alone, O Sovereign God. Find me in my place of nothingness and help me to survive.