Strength

Strength.  What is it? Is it measured in how much weight we can pick up?  Is it in our ability to over-take another person?  I suppose it could be.
Strength too is sometimes doing what seems so difficult.
Strength can be getting up and facing another day.  Strength can be taking one more step when your body hurts so much and your brain is screaming no, but you do it anyway.  Strength can be going against the crowd.  Doing or being the unpopular.  Strength can be standing up for your convictions.  Strength can be facing yourself honestly.  Strength sometimes is that step right past fear.  Being so afraid, but taking that step anyway.
I called myself strong today.  I feel anything but, actually.  If I am to be honest, I would have to say that I actually feel pretty fragile at the moment.
Past memories came up strongly and shook me up pretty good.  I felt the need to write out what I could and share it with two people who are important to me.  Both of them are on my side and I know I can trust them to just listen.  I won't be judged and I will be heard. They are walking with me, along side me.  I am sure if I were to stumble and fall, one or the other, maybe even both, would reach for my hand.
As the past emotions were storming through me, I found myself wanting to rely on past behaviors that are in no way good for me.  I had to find the strength to remind myself that this was just a memory.  I had to remind myself that I am strong.  Encourage myself that I could get through it.  Remind myself that it wasn't happening now, it was/is the past.
Strength is grabbing a hold of your own bootstraps and pulling with all your might.  Strength is telling yourself,  No!  Strength is holding on tight, to yourself as the storm rages.  Strength is having your eyes fixed to the horizon and watching for the end of the storm.
I have never allowed anyone close to me when the storm of a memory floods over me.  Not even my partner.  Most of the time if it happens, I am completely alone anyway.  I think my childhood prepared me for dealing with these things alone.  Don't know if that is good or bad.  It's just how it was.  Now, I do have someone I can turn to, someone who wants me to turn to her.  So far, I just can't.  I have to wait until the storm is past and my emotions are under control.  The closest thing I have done in letting someone near me while the storm was raging, was writing last night and actually sharing it.  I didn't feel strong at all.  I wanted someone's arms around me.  I didn't want to be alone.  I was hurting and I wanted the hurt to stop.  In the past, I would cut myself to make the emotional pain stop.  Last night, it would have been so easy to use a knife.  I was in that place.  But, I didn't.
When we are in the grip of emotional pain, it is so easy to make wrong choices.  It takes strength, real strength to pull ourselves back from the brink of what could lead to destruction in extreme cases.  At some point in our lives, we all are going to feel that heart wrenching emotional pain.  We are strong enough to make it through.  We have the strength.
We do have to realize that we are worth fighting for.  We do have the strength to hang on one more minute.  If it means picking up the phone and saying, help me... we have the strength.  If it means waking the person in the other room, we can be strong enough to take that step.
I think the biggest enemy to strength is a sense of worthlessness.  When we believe the lies that worthlessness sometimes screams in our face, strength wanes.  Strength seems elusive.  It is still there, just buried under so many lies.  It atrophies because we have forgotten how to use it.
Let's all exercise some strength because we ARE strong!