My December

Yeah, I'm keeping up with the Linkin Park theme like I did for yesterday's post. Yet I can't seem to help it.... A good part of yesterday and all day today I have had this stuck in my head....

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"My December"

This is my December
This is my time of the year
This is my December
This is all so clear
This is my December
This is my snow covered home
This is my December
This is me alone

And I
Just wish that I didn't feel
Like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things that I said
To make you feel like that
And I
Just wish that I didn't feel
Like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things that I said to you

And I'd give it all away
Just to have somewhere
To go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to

This is my December
These are my snow covered trees
This is me pretending
This is all I need

And I
Just wish that I didn't feel
Like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things that I said
To make you feel like that
And I
Just wish that I didn't feel
Like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things I said to you

And I give it all away
Just to have
Somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to

This is my December
This is my time of the year
This is my December
This is all so clear

Give it all away
Just to have somewhere
To go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to

Give it all away
Just to have somewhere
To go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to

The music without the lyrics is cathartic. Yet the lyrics really add to it... It's one of their deepest songs that I know.


To me, that song meaning is about regrets, loneliness and sadness.....

It's hard for me to put into words what I feel with this song.... There are days that it would be so easy to think back and wish we had done this and that differently. That we wished someone loved us better, or that we loved them better. That we wished we had never given up on a person or that we wished that someone had never given up on us.


For my life, it's always been broken promises, which some of that I allow, likely. You see, in my thirty something years of life, the only one who has not given up on me in any sort is my husband. (I don't count my kids in that yet. Too young.) Yet sometimes over the 17 years we have been together, (Married 13 years) I'm surprised he hasn't. Everyone else I have ever known has, at least at one time or another and many of them forever. I say I got used to it but really I didn't. It just made my heart harder..... Made me more angry, more co-dependent in that I wanted to control everything that went on around me, or at least know everything that was going on and why it was. I'm still like that..... It's worked well in some cases and not so well in others.

My most lonely years were the years I battled the worst depression I ever had. It was honestly a good thing I didn't have depressing music to listen to at that time or it would have been even worse.... I felt loved by nobody. Not even my beloved grandpa. He couldn't see us very often and we could only go to him every so often. Even after he gave me my first flute and I went into band, that happiness only lasted so long before the tentacles of depression and despair took over.... Again. I was twelve. Yet even today you see in the news and social media kids as young as eight killing themselves.... I was eleven when I got the first note in school saying that I should just be dead. Now it hadn't been the first time I heard it said to me but it was the first time I saw it written about me by someone who then pretended to be a friend. It's a good thing I didn't trust her much anyway but still....

I told my daughter just tonight, who is ten that if she learns nothing in life, to please never give up, no matter how bad it gets...... NEVER!

By the time I was her age she is now, the depression had not started yet but it wasn't far off. Yet I had seen more in those ten years than many would in a lifetime..... It's kinda ironic now how my kids have seen more than many kids have by this point yet I look at them and see how much better they have it than I ever did. They never have to doubt love, compassion, trust and hope.... I pray that as they get older, they never will either. Though, life will bring heartbreaks, I pray their foundation is better than mine ever has been.

I still remember when I was nearly fourteen, going into my last group home looking out the bedroom window that first night, seeing the moon and thinking about my destiny.

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I sat by the window that night looking out honestly thinking about so much..... Of course twenty one years later, I don't remember all of it. I do remember figuring at first that it was just another hellhole to survive. Well I did! Often that's what life can be. Good and bad, perceptions change following different things and times in our lives.

Do you all remember the movie Forest Gump? Remember the scene where Jenny was wanting to jump and all she did there is sit and cry? That's where I was....

I had been there so many times before.... Yet in that moment at the group home, I decided never again. It was time for me to heal, to finally be what I could be, and do my best for it.
By the time the courts decided it was time for me to go back home, I didn't want to. A part of me hated living with thirteen other girls but at least I was doing pretty good in school, was doing pretty decent in band and was finally relatively happy. I was safe.... I was in a place where I was heard. Where when my grandpa died, the one solid rock I ever had in my life, in one of my weakest times of grief, the staff there had my back. The teachers at my high school had my back.

I was forced to go back to a school district that had a history of not. Of kids who knew of my past cutting, my last few psych placements, and into a place where I had never been accepted or wanted by anyone prior., but for two girls I was in band with when I first started that.


Now I have listened to music often that compelled me to write. Yet after a long while of not having heard My December, somehow in the passing of Chester, this song has brought out much more... It's like the older I've gotten, the more deep I have gotten but also the more my brain runs away with me.... The older I have gotten, the more my eyes are opened to the world yet also to so much deep stuff in people's lives. Maybe that's because I have hardly any social life but still.... ;)

As I've gotten older, and as a mom, the more I have also spoken up about things. I don't know how much of that is "healing" or just as being an advocate or just simply that I like to talk. (Obviously... lol) Yet often I will find my heart aching and or yearning for more. Sometimes it yearns for unconditional love by family. Sometimes for people to have more compassion and less judgment. Sometimes for my heart to feel the joy that I see in others during times of worship. Sometimes for me to see life the way my three year old son does and not as a thirty something year old woman who has seen way too much in those years. Sometimes it yearns for truly feeling the love that God promises and I believe but often don't feel it....

I think to some degree, everyone struggles with this and more. Yet it's kinda ironic that I fight that stuff over 20 years later after accepting Christ.... Is that normal? That I don't know... I don't doubt my faith, it's not like that, it's just there's so much deep stuff to think on in life, that sometimes I can't help but to think the way I do, you know? I remember that night though. Days before we went to state for our marching band show (We won first in our class) and I remember looking out at the full moon sitting in the big van our group home had and staring at it. At first I figured salvation would bring the "easy life" where everything wouldn't be perfect but all would be smooth. Yeah, I'm laughing at myself too. I remember looking up and wondering if I was really forgiven for all the crap I had done and said all those years. If I would ever be truly healed of my past and what all had been done to me and said to me.

Yet even now I have healed from much yet I still have more to do. I still have questions, I still have doubts. Not doubts in my faith but as I said earlier, I think it's more questions than anything. Sometimes even jealousy/envy for where others are. Yet if not for where I have been, I wouldn't be able to relate to so many who I know my words can help. So then there is that. If it had not been for all the "hellholes" and stuff, then those who hurt, I would not relate to, and they may suffer in silence as a result.


So what will you do with your pain? What will you do with the past you had, no matter how bad? I am not ashamed that I am in Celebrate Recovery and probably will always be a part of to some degree. It proves to me that I'm not alone. It shows me that I can emerge victoriously, even if it takes a while. As the lyrics in the song Live on Forever says, 

"Dark days are gonna go away
They won't have the final say
These bones were always gonna fade
'Cause we were made for another place
The moment of our final breath
When all our fears are put to rest
Every tear will disappear
Heaven is real"




Hang in there, those of you who are hurting...... Listen to this....

"If they say
Who cares if one more light goes out
In the sky of a million stars
It flickers, flickers
Who cares when someone's time runs out
If a moment is all we are
Or quicker, quicker
Who cares if one more light goes out
Well I do"


~ Special Momma ~