Baggage.

Today was quiet in work, I unpacked a parcel very slowly and listened to music.

I watched (as I usually do when it's deathly) people scurrying past outside the window, to-ing and fro-ing, strangers looking like lab rats running with no direction. I wondered who they were, what they do, who they love, how their life is.

I usually ponder alot standing behind the counter, sort of like a waking daydream. I used to daydream alot as a child, mainly because I had no real friends.

Anyhow, back to today. Val my colleague asked if she could go ten mins early as she had to be at a parent's evening at her daughter's school. I said of course that was fine, as it meant I could have the last ten minutes of the day by myself, alone in a quiet shop. I listened to one of my favourite songs, still watching people dashing back and forth, and closed at 5:30.

I went upstairs to finish off the end of day stuff: switching off the office computer, putting the till drawer away, washing my cup up, and all the other end of day things...

Then I burst into tears.

I cried for half an hour, upstairs in the office, not just your ordinary tears, I mean the type that come in waves, that leave you gulping for breath, the type that you actually feel coming out before your eyes actually start. I found myself taking huge gasping breaths inbetween sobs, not able to stop, not able to control myself. It was me and my sorrow, alone together.

At the moment, at this point in my life, I'm the unhappiest I've ever been.

It's not just because of a breakup, or because of my M.S, or because of my job, or church. I'm just generally struggling. Life seems an uphill struggle at the moment. I can't see a purpose or plan in my life, I can't see any future ahead, apart from more of the same. When I think about the future, I see a gaping black pit, with no light at the end of the tunnel; one reference point of light would be good, all I see are shades of light mixed with darkness so that the end result is a dreary mediocre grey, that infects every area of my life.

During that half hour, I kept thinking back to my childhood, my lack of real friends, my senior school, and again the lack of true friends. Alot of images came out, very hurtful things people have said and done to me. Probably mostly not deliberate, but painful to bear nonetheless. You know the picture: the short childish kid who's the butt of everyone's jokes, the "wierd kid" who everyone avoids talking to; the kid who seems to live in a little world of his own, who sits on his own, who eats on his own. What I've realised tonight is that that little kid is still here, even though he's older now, he's less able than ever to handle rejection and hurt.

I really am strange. I find in myself someone who looks at the world literally through a child's eyes; who gets confused when people are mean and nasty and awful to each other; who gets upset when he sees someone being treated unfairly; who can't understand why if he loves someone they cant love him back; who gets frustrated that some people seem threatened by genuine caring; all these things and more I've struggled to come to terms with most of my adult life, and I still can't.

I am so exhausted now, I still feel the remnants of the crying episode even now. I'm still finding myself filling up, thinking of all the hurt I encounter everyday in myself and other people. There's so much pain about, and I'm finidng it so hard to deal with at the moment. I wish God had made me different, I wished I had a heart of lead that could allow problems, hurts and dissapointment to just bounce off of, like a kevlar vest.

I guess at the heart of it all, at the moment, the core of my struggle, is that my life, at present, and as I look back, has been and is a dissapointment to me.

I don't know how you recover from that.

All I can say is, that at the most awful point tonight, when I thought I was never gonna stop crying, when I thought I would just cry and cry until I dropped dead of grief, God was there with me. I can't explain it, and I don't want to. I just knew.

I don't know what's happening in my life at the moment, but I do know that God loves me, and that is literally the only thing keeping me going.

When God touches your life in a special way, when you feel his presence beside you, it's something no words could ever express. I've known Jesus since I was 9 years old, and desite the awful, hungry, cavernous black hole in my heart at the moment, I know he's in there somewhere, because he promised to never leave me or forsake me. I find myself filling up as Im typing this, because as unhappy as I am, I believe that.

What is life about, really? For me it's Jesus.

There's no one else who has ever been as close. No one else has ever been there right at the moment I needed them; when the panic starts and you feel like your heart is about to burst and your world is caving in; when ur head screams that nobody cares and your heart starts to agree; when your life seems to be an endless series of heartbreaks and dissapointments; when ur ability to doubt outgrows your ability to believe; in all of this, through my life, one person has been there;

Jesus. the One who loves me.

These aren't words that I loftily type from a padded ivory tower, free from pain and placed in the heights of intellectual obscurity and detachment. These are words formed in the furnace of this painful, sad and desperate world, where this little boy that is me gets hurt and wounded every day. I'm not what I should be, but I'm not what I was.

I don't know why I wrote all this. I find the christian life a real struggle, the hardest part being the struggle to accept myself as someone who is His beloved.

But I'm grateful beyond words that i am, that He would love me so much to give up everything, and die for me. That His passion for me outweighs my passion for Him.