lover’s dread.

This plague of loneliness has swept over me and not even the blood of the lamb can shield me from my fate. I hate when these feelings defeat me. I hate that I can’t just get over how I feel: without love, without an excuse to be cared for, without a reason to be lusted over, without a position to be held into. All of these things we called fleshly drown me. Drowned me enough to lay in bed early Sunday morning instead of celebrating the Passover Lamb’s victory over death. 

I’m in a season of intentional longing and loneliness. This has to be God-breathed because I don’t want to believe this pain won’t be worked around for my good. I keep telling myself that I’m not in a place to be in place with any man. My garden needs pruned of the weeds of past hurt and decisions. What I need isn’t close to a want – stepping closer to a desire – because I need to want to be whole before I can appreciate what’s been given. Or what’s waiting for me. I just want to be watered. I feel ten steps closer to dead. 

I’m tired of tricking my mind into thinking that this is a choice, that being single is a choice. This is out of my hands. Every chance at a relationship that I bring into my life doesn’t align with what the Creator wants for me, so it can’t do anything but fail. I’ll like them but they don’t like me in return. He’ll want me but once he finds out that he can’t fuck me, that want goes away. I’ll tell them no but they still try to violate me. I keep dreaming of running into him but every time I walk around his way, he’s never to be seen. I think he’s too good and pure for me and I’m right. 

There’s this one. So sweet, so clean, so innocent. At least from what I can see. He’s the example of “right”; the right decision, the right type. I’m too dirty for him. My past is riddled with dark shit. I’m too off-balanced and off-kilter to mess up his seemingly perfect balance with God. I often joke that I would “ruin” his life. I’m really not when I say that. Ain’t no way our opposites would ever attract. The barrier between our closeness is that thick. Because if the Creator is indeed fair and just, making me and him work would render Her own words and power to be moot. 

This is ‘lover’s dread’. I want to blame everyone else but me for it. I want to blame the men of the past for soiling me so bad to the point of destruction. I’m destroying myself as I write this, which I am because I don’t want to be weighed down by these feelings. These feelings hit me last night and remain here with me, even in this moment, as I thought reading God’s word would ri me of them. It failed. I couldn’t focus. My eyes are heavy but crying ain’t in my repertoire. I feel like I can’t, especially on a date like today. On this day, we celebrate when death is swallowed up by victory. When one thing we thought was dead and gone comes back alive and with a greater purpose. Death has lost its sting. 

Death still stings. The death of my Dad still stings. I wouldn’t be in his place of dread if he was still here, conflating mistakes with poor decisions because they rendered the same result: leaving me a crimson stain unable to be washed clean.