I sit here in front of my laptop with trembling hands. The words are threatening to spill over. And once I start, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop. What if I can’t stop? What if it’s all wrong? What then?

I feel it building. The pressure on my chest sits even heavier than it did the day before. And I don’t know what to do with it. I am going to implode. I am going to burst out from inside myself. I am a ticking time bomb. I am a dormant volcano that is going to burn the entire world around me one day without any warning. I am hiding in here. I am hiding everything in here. It doesn’t feel right. And it doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn’t feel safe. And it doesn’t feel dangerous. It doesn’t feel at all. There’s nothing there except a shell of who I once was.

The thing is, I can barely look at myself in the mirror. I hate myself. I do. And I know that’s something that might make people uncomfortable. It’s a harsh statement. Hate is a strong word. And I have directed that arrow of hate at my own heart. I know there are people that care for me. I know there are people that love me. And I know that people want to shield those they care about from hate, which is why these words might feel uncomfortable. But there is nothing anyone can do to deflect this. Only I can set the arrow down. And right now, I can’t fathom ever being able to do so. Right now, my finger is twitching, begging to let that arrow fly and destroy all I have left inside of me. That statement is scary. It’s naked. Vulnerable. Honest. And freeing. It’s the truth. That’s all it is. The God’s honest truth. And it’s time to tell the truth.

I have hated myself for a long time. I could give you a whole lot of theories and background stories, but none of that matters at this point. What does matter is I thought I had gotten better when I went to stay at a mental hospital for 8 days last year, but I didn’t. I guess I pretended. I hid myself under a cloak of busyness. I hid myself under the allure of accomplishments. I buried my heart six feet in the ground and ran as fast as I could in the other direction. Sure that if I could just get far enough away, it would be ok. But it wasn’t ok. I wasn’t ok. Nothing was ok. Not really.

I turned from God. And then I turned from myself. I became ugly. Hateful. Hurtful. Selfish. I became someone who was no longer me. And I hid it under a carefully constructed mask. A mask that demanded that I show the world just how “fine” I was. And I kept the mask on as long as I could, until the truth could no longer be denied. The mask fell from my face on a warm Wednesday evening and all that was left behind was me. I recoiled at the exposure. I felt like people could really see who I was for the first time. Was it any wonder that they didn’t like what they saw in me? I didn’t think so. Nothing anyone could say or do to me could ever touch what I felt about myself. No one’s rejection reached as far into the depths of my soul as my own rejection of myself did.

To those of you that have seen me lately, some of this might not come as a surprise. Obviously, I am not ok. You’ve seen me in this turmoil; I know you have. I am crying in the school parking lot. I can’t meet your eyes when I run into you at the grocery store. I am sobbing uncontrollably in church. I am abrupt, very suddenly turning and running away whenever I feel unable to control the tidal wave of emotions inside of me. I am behaving strangely. I am forgetting my responsibilities. I am distracted. I am scared of never really being seen again for who I am. And I am even more scared of actually being seen again. I am a desperate hopeful contradiction.

I have wrote and rewrote these words numerous times. I have published this post and then deleted it in fear, then re-published and re-deleted it. I am so unsure of everything around me. Of who I am. Of who I am not. I am so very unsure. And I don’t know why I must share this. I don’t know why I feel the need to expose my wounds to the world. I don’t know anything anymore. Except maybe there is a tiny piece of me still in here. Maybe there is a tiny piece of me begging to get out, dying to begin again, and desperate to feel.

For today, I take solace in the fact that these words and this blank page in front of me is a witness to a life that no longer feels real. So the answer is no. No. I am not ok. And that has to be ok for today.