The hopelessness of self-destruction

Oxford, England

The monster within 

If only for a moment, the sun shone so brightly.

Were you prepared to forget and throw away the beauty of that moment in your relentless drive for perfection?

Perfection.
You will never find.

I, if any, have been enslaved to becoming all that I felt lay beneath the definition of perfection.

The more I strive to become the perfect being, never created,
the farther I am from ever becoming that which I know I’m intended to be.

Love – a word that holds so much meaning – has become so empty and dry.I once felt I love you.
Now, I know not what I feel.

There is sadness, joy and hatred – yet, beneath all that, I see the person you revealed to me.
The person you stripped of all that you now hold so tightly to.
Where are you now? Where is your beauty and tenderness?

Is it lost because I gave way to the monster within – often my only true reliable companion?

That monster has become my lover, my strength.
The sadness lies in the fact that it is my true destroyer.
How true to life, that which I hold so tightly to – seeks to destroy and kill me.
It isn’t love I search for in my quest for thinness.

I search to kill the desire to be loved,
which so often has shown itself to be the invitation for another knife within.

How lost I am.
I search for a reason to find my way home. I see none.

So, I journey onward with my only love.
I crave for a love that loves me enough,
so I no longer need to hold on to the enemy within.

Once – your love promised me all that.
Until I knew it was a conditional love that only loved me if I were perfect.
I’m going in the wrong direction. I’m paying a heavy price to go in this way.
Why can’t I turn? I know not. I only know I see no reason to.

You once were so meaningful to me.

You are a beautiful person, when you lay alone – without a world to please.
Where did you go?

Hope discovered 

These words, written in 1987, expressed my inner torment.  I was desperately trying to numb my pain through self-destruction.  In writing this, I began became to see some of the lies I was believing. I could see that my starvation was an attempt to silence the inner monster.  In facing the lies and dealing with them spiritually and emotionally, a journey towards healing began.  It took a long while, but the darkness disappated. The destruction ceased.I kept that piece of writing, “The Monster Within” to remind myself of the depth of the blackness I had experienced in contrast to the freedom and light I now have.  

I am now filled with a passion and zest for life that would have been unimaginable when I penned those words.
These words written so long ago come from private journal and are now being made public. It’s possible that you, or someone you know, may be experiencing darkness and anguish. You may seek to understand what it is that drives the deadly destruction.  It is lies that are there because of brokenness that needs to be repaired.  I want to give you hope that in the deepest despair, and the greatest hurt, we can find our way to freedom.

It’s sometimes a long journey and help is often needed to unravel the twisted lies that have been deeply imbedded.God desires to walk the road with us and give us all we need to come to a place that we realize we found our way home.