the wilderness. again.

I question fairness every time I wake up here. Pittsburgh was not where I wanted or needed to be. I used to say that I had to come here but the truth is that I didn’t. Nothing made me come here. Not the decisions:  the drinking to numb the thoughts, the daytime sex with randoms, the complete washout of life insurance money or the prospects of not having a place to live. I was a grown-ass person. I didn’t have to do anything that I didn’t want to do. I just made my prime choice of running away. Who would want to keep me? Where would I go? Coming to Pittsburgh was this survivor’s last stand because I was in the fight for my life and didn’t know it. But like when shit gets tough, I run as far away as possible. 

I’ve been lying to the world for years, it seems. I’m not sure this was a move of God’s omniscience. I think I told that story to others to gussy up my own man-made madness; to take away my responsibility in making the decision to come here and live in what-feels-like a bitter misery. 

But as I write these words, it feels like a deep disrespect to a God that brought me out of my own Egypt and into a place of safety, a space that I take for granted so much that God had – or has, to be fair – me walking around in circles for what has now been ten years because I keep complaining about where I am. I often say that I hate it here. I hate living here and hate why I had to live here. I sabotage relationships and run ragged in these communities God gave me as a response to the guilt of having to come here. So I sit in the wilderness because I have a deep resentment for having to be in Pittsburgh. Until I get over that, I won’t be let out. 

So that’s why I want to run away from here: so I don’t have to stand neck-deep in telling God that I’m not grateful for being here, that it was a mistake to coalesce two people into discussing the idea of giving me the twin mattress on the second floor of a house in Green Tree to sleep on every night because it would’ve been the couch of a man that planned to coerce sex out of me for a place to stay. Because once I don’t give God credit for saving my damn life, She’ll destroy me.