The ShellShock of Hurt

The shell shock of hurt is dangerously deafening.

The lips of love try to mouth me to action;

To move me to go somewhere, to come with it,

But hurt has shrunk me down to size

And I wish to be smaller.

I try to muster movement..

But this rocking only cradles my ideal of never getting up.

So why the inability to hear,

Without a single sign of getting anywhere?

My teeth clasp my left knee that's engulfed by my chest.

I don't know what to do!

And I wish, I wish I could say,

That I'm holding onto You.

But I'm not as faithful as I'd like to be

And I'm definitely not as faithful as Your love for me.

By Jeanique van Blerk //iridescent_poet//

I hate this poem. Like I really hate it. And not because I don’t think it’s any good (not that I’m entirely sure it is) and not because it isn’t real or honest, but because it’s almost too much of each of those. What this piece is really saying just bothers me and actually really haunts me in the worst of ways, because that’s me. It's a huge part of me, a part I despise and hate and just tears me up to the core.

Writing this short, few line poem was one of the hardest pieces I’ve had to write. The first time I read it out loud to someone, or actually just read it out loud to myself in front of them, it literally felt like my heart was breaking. It felt like it was breaking all over again as I felt the meaning of it and the space I was in all over again; this soul crushing pain. And then not just that but I felt so frikken disappointed in myself that that’s the place I allowed myself to fall and drift and dwell in.

This poem, amidst all my others, is the most scary thing to me because it’s writing with an air of hopelessness and more than that it was written looking at a moment in which there was or felt like the most humongous chasm between myself and my Saviour.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:” (John 10:27-28 KJV) How. Why. What in the world was I thinking!? How could I just be so stupid. So stupid as to let my hurt drown out His Voice, His speaking to me, His being there for me.

And I think, looking back on the piece and that time in my life, something that just added to the weight of the disappointment I felt in myself, as I let my own words wash over me, was or rather is the realisation that I wasn’t at all the person I thought myself to be and even more so I wasn’t living or acting or even trying anymore to be the person I know God was and is calling me to be.

Sincerely learning to Live with my Brokenness,

Jeanique van Blerk //iridescent_poet//