What Reluctance Feels Like (sample)

Published on Elephant Journal

… My reluctance paralyzes me and I shut down as if it’s an exercise in safety and self preservation and at the same time in a bizarre way it hurts to the point of madness to give less of myself.

So I lay my head down and look like I’m asleep but my heart beats awkwardly with one eye open. After all, it’s hard to sleep on broken pieces. I squirm and readjust and sometimes find a spot where nothing is poking me too hard and I doze off but then inevitably I move in my sleep and I wake up with a sharp edge digging into my skin in a critical place like a dagger attached to an angry yet lazy hand.

And it is then I recommit myself to choosing love and, albeit reluctantly, I make the conscious decision to breathe love, to speak love, to live love. I cradle my uncertainty and love says “come what may.”

Because I know sometimes the truth can crush your skeletal faith. And everything you believed in can crash to your feet and splinter like your bones, tiny particles blowing away, never to be seen again.

But I also know that love and grace will put you back together because you are worthy,

you are worthy,

you are worthy of more

than the truth

that broke you.