emotional exhaustion

I feel exhausted.

Physically, I'm wide awake. Emotionally, I'm exhausted.

I can't tell you why. Not because it's something I'd be embarrassed to share, but, rather, because it is something I don't really understand. My life is going fantastic. I don't have anything to complain about. Yet something sits within me, unsettled. A restlessness gnaws away at my bones. A quiet whisper comes from the dark corners of my mind: You are meant for more.

I don't know what it means.

I am meant for more? If only I knew what that voice meant!

I told Courtney on the phone today, "I have no idea where my life is going. I have no idea what I want to do with my life." It used to all be so clear. I was going to go to college. I was going to fall in love. I was going to get married. I was going to be a youth minister at a small church. I had my whole life planned out in front of me.

This illusory idea that I control my own fate fell to pieces this year. Being suicidal for four months straight, wishing for nothing but death and being tempted at times to just slit my wrists and be done with it, all of this forced me to reconsider life, to reconsider faith, to reconsider my perspectives. I went through what sociologists call "cognitive dissonance": the way I perceived reality was not the reality I experienced. This forced me to re:examine every aspect of my life. I drowned in confusion and hopelessness. The great burden on my heart seemed, quite frankly, unbearable at times. I would weep as I drove around Cincinnati, crying out for God to just take my life. Everything in my world was falling apart—my friendships, my faith, even my own sanity—and I had nothing to hold onto. I wished for a shoulder to cry on, but I feared anyone or anything that offered a shoulder. I became cynical and skeptical. As one of my favorite songs goes, "I'm tired, cynical and broken, but wiser; heavy with a sense of resentment. But I used to be so much different: I used to have so much faith, I knew I could make a difference." I echoed their refrain in yet another song: "If you ever feel loved or needed, remember that you're one of the lucky ones. And if it's over, just remember what I told you: it was bound to happen, so just keep moving on, there's no perfect endings." I have been accused by many of having my head in the clouds; yet a deep sense of realism lives within my bones, and I find that I often force my head into the clouds as an escape hatch from the reality of the world we live in. A world where there are no perfect endings—at least not for boys like me. One of their lyrics became my motto: "It never ends, it never ends, it never ends. Big shot, screaming, put your hands in the sky. Give it up, Boy, give it up, or you're gonna die. You'll get a bullet in the back of the neck, in the back of the neck, right between the eyes." Why keep striving? Why keep thriving? Why keep moving forward, stumbling through the wasteland of the life that has been dealt to me? It seems anytime I reach, anytime I attempt to fly, anytime I even dream, my world crashes down, reality spits in my face, and I am left more broken and bloodied than before. The cycle of failure, let-down, and despair continues to spiral, to spiral out-of-control, its descent growing faster and faster with each feeble attempt to seize a life worth living.

I would like to think that that stage of my life is but yet a memory. The hopelessness and despair have vanished, but my outlook and perspective has drastically changed. I no longer feel like I can make a difference. I no longer feel like I have a future. I no longer feel that there is anymore for me than what I can taste, touch, and feel. Perhaps this is an overstatement, and I'm sure it is. My faith in God bent, but it did not break, and though it has returned in a slightly different, more stoic form, it is still present. My friendships are returning, though some of the beauty has been lost. The utter depression has abandoned me, but in its wake it has left a deep hole that needs to be filled. It poisoned my heart and chewed away at it, and though it is gone, its damage remains unhealed. I am afraid to dream. I am afraid to hope. I am afraid to "reach for the stars," so to speak, for I fear that such an endeavor will only be met with great failure and loss—driving me ever-deeper into the confusion that is my life.

"What is it that I want out of life?" It is simple. I want to love and be loved. I want to love a woman with all my heart, a woman who loves me. I want to love my kids and give them the world. This is what I want. This is it. This is all. I am so easy to please. Yet tell me why the simplest dreams seem to be the most intangible? Tell me why they seem so hard to grasp? Why does it feel like holding onto such a dream is akin to clutching onto a barbed wire fence: the harder I squeeze, the firmer I hold on, the more it hurts, the more blood and tears I spill. I had a dream. I tasted that dream. And then it was ripped from my fingers. "And a voice inside my head just repeated: 'This is not the way we were told that it was going to be.'" I do not wish to go back to that dream. No, I have found another dream—a dream that I hope will, one day, become a reality. Yet terror grips me. I am frightened to hope. Frightened to dream. My instincts shout, "Run! Run, or you'll only be hurt!" To love and be loved… So simple yet so elusive.

Yet the whisper still calls me: You are meant for more.

I am haunted by a dream. In this dream, I am sitting in a tear-stained sofa mutilated with coffee stains and cigarette burns. A burning Marlboro 27 sits between the fingers in one hand, smoldering, and in the other is a bottle of whiskey. I smoke and drink, for that's all I have left. My dreams are gone. They've abandoned me. They've slipped through my fingers. Maybe I wasn't good enough, wise enough, cute enough. Maybe I wasn't the man I should have been. Or maybe life just never dealt me a good hand. Who knows? The route doesn't matter; it's the destination that I see. An alcoholic drowning his miseries away, only compounding the depression, but having no motivation to clean up his life because "What's the point? It'll all just be shot to hell. Somehow. It always ends up breaking on the rocks."

And when I awake, my heart churns and the voice whispers: You are meant for more.

I sat out on the front porch, staring at the moon. It hung like a dying ember, and it looked so beautiful. Yet I know that it is nothing more than a rocky wasteland strewn with craters. Desolate of life. Dreams can look so beautiful, yet beneath the veil of hope lies another wasteland void of life.

You are meant for more.

Cynicism runs through my veins. Skepticism has become my second-nature. "Don't dream, Anthony. Don't hope. Just embrace life. Become a full-blown stoic. Hell, what do you have to lose? Every time you've dreamed, you've been broken. Every time you've hoped, you've been let down. Every time you've reached for the stars, you've been mocked and shot down. Every time you've dared to move forward, fate has delivered a kick to your face and left you sprawled on the ground, spitting blood and broken teeth. Isn't it obvious? You are not meant for anything. You're a defective human being. You want to make a difference? Too bad, because you can't. You want to love and be loved? Too bad, because you're not lovable—and every time you love someone, you somehow screw it up. And even when you don't screw it up, they screw you over. I don't understand why you keep daring to believe that you're meant for more."

Neither do I. Yet I cannot forsake the voice that whispers to me in the quiet: You are meant for more. SO MUCH MORE. What is this Voice speaking of? I hold my breath, close my eyes, imagine. What if God isn't done with me yet? What if there is more for me. What if He has magnificent, amazing, unbelievable plans for me? A certain aura has followed me my entire life—those who have come to intimately know me sense a spark of greatness within me, a spark that they do not see in others. There is something me. Something enduring. Something that will not give up so easily.

I want to make a difference.
I can make a difference.
I will make a difference.

But I don't know how.