burn(ing) out

Honestly.

I've tried to write these words down for days and weeks and months, and I get so discouraged because they're the same words that I've been writing, and the same ideas and concepts that other women have been writing, and I just keep talking myself out of it, because who needs to hear the same thing over and over?

Honestly.

I'm in a hard place right now. I'm burned out, I'm emotionally exhausted and mentally spent. I am fighting the comparisons with other women who seem to have found their place and are fulfilled by doing all those things that they say God wants for them to do. I'm embarrassed by my lack of contentment in my life right now and by my desire for a life that has more meaning. 

Honestly.

I'm filling my days up in an effort to feel important, to prove to the world that I have just as much worth and value as everyone else, because look at what I can offer--but really I'm just spinning my wheels and lighting a fire inside of myself that burns so brightly it threatens to reduce me to ash when it's gone. 

Honestly.

There is ugliness hiding here. Ugliness in the shape of jealousy, comparison, discontentment, selfishness, impatience, rage. This heart is a black hole.

Honestly.

I am afraid. I am afraid of who I am right now, I am afraid of what I am on my way to becoming, and I am afraid of what I might miss out on in the future because I didn't work hard enough in the past. I am also exhausted, in a way that is more than just sleep-deprivation. It's an exhaustion of the soul, of the heart--a weary mind crying out, "I give up! I cannot do this anymore, I cannot live up to these expectations, and I'd rather lie here in the dirt than keep trying to play this game of pretend."

Honestly.

I don't know how to write anymore. And that is just one more log on the fire, one more rock to add to my pile. Writing was a gift, a calling, and I feel like I've wasted it. Babies, and housekeeping, and a different life took over and now it's just a whisper of something I used to know. 

The baby is crying, it's getting late, and I know I've got a full schedule tomorrow. And so that's the end of that.