Corruption

I am really scared to publish this, but I have to.

I saw corruption today.  There was no rubbing my eyes and hoping to erase the reality, because I knew I couldn't.  I saw corruption, and if I were looking for an animal analogy, I would say that I saw rats.  Rats save themselves and will do whatever they can to survive, they'll even live in crap and gutters, so long as they're alive to pollute the rest of the world. I saw corruption today with my own eyes, and although I feel a little less innocent, my mind is clearer.  We're all sinners, but there are those who are so evil, they revel in it.  They don't know how to survive without being corrupt because they are trapped in their own cesspool of filth, with a conscience so warped that they are incapable of ever turning back.  Trapped in a system of disgust, they rot....and the rest of us are left to fight them.  The saddest thing I realized?  We won't always win.  But God will, one day; he creates some people to become fighters here on Earth, and we all fight in different ways.

My church has been talking about sin versus mistakes.  The message is this: Mistakes happen without intent.  Sins happen with full knowledge; you mean to do it.  There are sins you just commit once, and there are sins that you continually commit, knowing the possible circumstances.  Either way, we don't like the word "SIN", so we call them "MISTAKES".  Another part of the lesson was this: Stop hating yourself, because the Lamb of God carted your sin and took it away. I was thinking about this in church this past weekend and I heard a little voice say "You're focusing on yourself too much.  Turn it outward."  Give to others, is what I thought.  And I am right.  I am focusing too much on figuring out what's wrong with me and I am fighting myself; I am not fighting the right people.  I am not saving the right people, and I am not fighting the right people.  I need to take this passion within me and do something with it.  One of my girlfriends asked me a few weeks ago "Have you ever wondered if you are a huge threat to the devil?  You have a huge personality and a big mouth."  It made me giggle, but I have seriously been considering that a lot lately.  I have been thinking about where my influence is going and whether or not I need to redirect it, in fact, I am wondering if I am being commanded to do so. 

I truly am afraid to publish this, but I am going to anyway, because I need to.  I have had fears that if people know this, they will take advantage of it.  I have also had fears that people will forget that I am also very confident and driven.  Anyway, maybe it will inspire you, maybe not.  Either way, I have to let it out.  It's 100% the truth, and it's something that I haven't been willing to admit to myself. 

I am guilty of hatred, toward myself.  I don't hate anyone.  I truly don't hate anyone, but I beat myself up constantly.  Maybe I am such a narcissist I am only capable of hating myself, I don't know....but I don't hate one person on this planet.  In fact, I have wondered why I am so forgiving of others.  Not only am I forgiving, I continue to go back for more abuse.  Maybe it's not because I am that good and truly forgiving, but instead because I am too busy blaming myself for what they did to me instead.  When you hear me say that someone did something to me, when the lights go out and I lay in my bed, I wonder what I did wrong.  This is honest to God, the truth, so if there's anyone out there thinking "Brittany has no conscience; Brittany thinks she's so perfect," rest assured, you are wrong.  Don't bother hating me.  I have already beat you.  I have wanted to scrape away parts of myself and ignore the root of where they come from.  I have wanted to be submissive because I am afraid of my own self-control.  I have wanted to ignore the feisty parts of my personality because it scares me not to be meek like a Bible character.  There are too many things that I cannot describe, but what you can take with you is that I have done a lot of self-loathing and allowed a lot of people to mistreat me because I think I deserve it.  I don't know where it comes from exactly, but it's the deep-throated voice that rings in my head nearly every day of my life.  It's the voice that tells me I am a fraud when someone tells me I am good because I think I am bad. It's the voice telling me that I am fat when I am a size zero.  It's the voice telling me that I am not ever going to get better than what I have, because I don't deserve it.  It's the voice telling me that if I ask for more for myself, I am stuck-up.  It's the voice that scares me out of being myself because I am complicated, difficult, and too opinionated.  It's the voice that tells me I did something to deserve being physically mistreated in more than one way, and to continue to seek the wrong people in my life.  It's the voice that tells me to run when I am uncomfortable.  I originally listed a lot of specific examples, but I erased them because I am not ready to be that open about just how far I have gone to make other people happy while crying inside and blowing up later. 

Luckily, I have learned, most of the time, to ignore these negative thoughts, but it is still a constant struggle and I have not learned completely that I am worth so much more than I have asked for.  I am starting to realize that God gave me certain traits and as difficult as they are to navigate, I am supposed to use them for him.  I am most definitely God's creation, with some Earthly bruises, and the truth is, God has a purpose for us all.  Maybe when I stop fighting who I am, that is when I will live to my full potential.   

So why am I writing this?  Bottom line, I am a fighter, and I have been fighting the wrong person. You remember how I said I saw corruption today?  Well, I am pissed and this wrath I have for myself?  Yeah, it's being wasted.  From this day forward, I am fighting the right people....without hesitation.  I am angry and I believe that God gave me a will to fight people who are corrupt.  I am opinionated, I am tough, and all of this energy that's going full throttle toward my direction, I can't imagine what it would do to someone who deserves it.  I am not afraid of people if they are attacking someone else, so all I need to do is treat myself with the respect that I would show someone else.  I learned a big lesson today.