This blog post has been a product of procrastination at its finest because I just didn’t know how to write it. I haven’t really told my friends or family the things I’m writing today. I usually use words to create pretty bows, coats of sugar and silver linings, but I realized I couldn’t do that here. That wouldn’t be honest.
I just finished living the best four years of my life. In the past two months I graduated from college, packed up my cute 1950s/60s house in Orange, said goodbye to my roommates, to our backyard with the perfect amount of persimmon-tree shade, and to our unofficial outdoor cat Luna.
I moved back home.
Let me throw out a disclaimer before I go any further: I love my family. My mom is like a sister to me and was the Bible to me before I had any desire to read it for myself. My dad is high-key one of the most humorous people you’ll ever meet and my little big brother (he’s tall) is my partner in crime and we drive the parentals crazy with our collective energy.
I love my family and would never ask for another one. But that being said, I am hard-core struggling with being back in the house I grew up in.
I have a few theories as to why I’m struggling, but none of them explain the intensity of my feelings when I am in this house – the loneliness, the fear, the self-loathing, frustration, desperation, and the complete lack of control over these emotions.
Being here has often felt like the past four years didn’t happen. Poof! Gone! The degree on my desk, photos of past adventures, spiritual growth and contentment are just figments of my imagination.
Rewind four years and you have a very different Elisa. You have a teenager who thought she knew better than Jesus, who really didn’t have a personal relationship with God. She was insecure, fearful, dependent on other people and weak. I don’t like her at all and I thought she was behind me for good. But my old self and new self are at odds in this house. No actually that’s putting it lightly – it’s a war.
Most of the time I’m so frustrated with myself that I just want to scream or throw something. I’m terrified of being alone because that’s when the voices start plaguing my mind with the worst sort of lies. I literally don’t know what to do so I just cry.
This is the part where I would usually put a positive spin on the whole situation – detailing what I think God is teaching me through this or how I’m growing. But I’ve got nothing. God feels very far away.
If you’re reading this please pray. Pray, in the words of my mom (and Beth Moore), that I would drop my broken chains on the floor where they belong. The Lord has already delivered me from all the things I’m struggling with. For the sake of my family, as well as my own, I don’t want my last months before the race to be filled with such turmoil. Pray that I would know that God is here with me, even though it feels like I left Him with the Persimmon tree.
