Found

Joelle Deyo is our Wednesday contributor.

She holds a degree in Fine Arts from Cal Poly, Pomona and is an artist residing in Glendora, California.

Joelle knows the pain of marital infidelity, betrayal and divorce, and she is a survivor of addiction, childhood sexual abuse, and Anorexia.

She brings a wealth of experience to Wings Like Eagles, and is willing to be transparent and real so that our readers who have traveled similar paths will have someone with whom they can relate.

She is an advocate for the recovery process, and is a firm believer that there is hope, and a fulfilling life on the other side of Crisis.

It is Joelle's hope is that her experiences, past and present, will bring perspective and encouragement to those who are in the middle of their own life battles and who have been stuck in the pit, just like her.

When I was a little girl I had a lot of sadness in my heart.  I can still feel pangs of that old pain now as crushing memories rise up from the dust and come to me out of the deep chasm Time has carved in my heart.  I remember that when I felt lonely, ashamed, or afraid, I shut myself in away my closet.  My morbid fear of being unwanted sent me running to the shadows where I hid, terribly confused and hurting, and waited for someone to come and find me.  No one ever did.

The last time I hid like that was about a year and a half ago.  I was hosting a dinner party, and my house was full of candle light and music and friends who were drinking and making merry.  Toward the end of our meal as everyone was laughing and working on their third and fourth glasses of merlot, I politely excused myself from the table, and went and locked myself in my bathroom.  I sat on the floor for ten full minutes, trying not to panic and sob.

As I recited my mantra, “Keep it together.  Keep it together.  Keep it together,” I knew that no one was going to come and knock on that door.  No one was going to lift me up and take me in their arms and tell me it was going to be alright.  I finally stood up, checked to make sure my hair and makeup were perfect, practiced my smile, and rejoined the party.

I have hidden away in closets, behind bathroom doors, underneath my accomplishments and gifts, and behind clothing and cosmetics.  I have walked through life allowing myself to be seen only through a haze of smoke or in the reflection of mirrors, a shattered girl who has never stopped waiting to be found.

I sat down at my computer to write something relatively fluffy and banal tonight when my heart dropped in my chest.  Any and all humorous, light-hearted thoughts I had were quickly replaced with a singular, overwhelming desire to somehow break through this page and look you, dear Reader, in the eye and to speak directly into your heart about this duality that I have lived with – a duality that I suspect you have lived with too, in your own way.

We are not the same, you and I.  You do not live in my skin, and you cannot travel the private paths where only I walk within my soul, but you are flesh and blood, as I am.  We are not the same, but you are like me; a legatee of everything that it means to be wholly human in a fallen world.  You may wish, like me, to conceal what makes you feel humiliated and afraid.  You may run away to a hiding place of your own, only to realize that all you want is to be sought out.  In moments of utter despair you may speak to the darkness, “I am the only one who knows what this feels like.”

We comb the repositories of collective human understanding in search of comfort and encouragement.  We constantly connect with the stunning, haunting, exquisitely heartbreaking works of music, art, and literature and comprehend at least objectively that much of what is most celebrated in the world is the produce of someone’s season of profound aching.  We acknowledge that those who have gone before us were like us, too – fragile, complex, hopeful… susceptible. Yet we hide, believing that we are alone.

Are you there?  I’m knocking on your door.  I came to find you and tell you that though I can never see the panorama with your eyes, and though you can’t express the sound of loss with my voice, we both have experiential knowledge of the meaning of the word suffering.  If you have ever believed that no one could possibly want you, or would ever be able to find you, I am here to sit with you and say, “I know exactly what that feels like. You’re not alone.”

What an incredible thing to share that understanding.  Can you imagine what it would be like if you really were the only person on Earth who had ever been addicted?  The only person who had ever survived loss?  The only person who had ever been betrayed or hurt?  What if you were the only person out of seven billion that could hear music, or describe a sunset?  No matter how lonely I have felt at times, that is a reality I just can’t fathom.

If we hide away for fear that we cannot be understood or cared for, we will spend most of our lives in the shadows.  No one may ever know to come looking for us.  If we open the door and reveal ourselves, we may be lifted up to heal along side our friends, with our families, and in the presence of those who have survived and who can show us a way through.