This One's For You

There are often times I get praised for the way I handle life's back-to-back to back hits and while my answer tends to throw people off with my honesty- and transparency- it's genuinely the truth:

I'm accustomed to it- and I have been my entire life.

I am accustomed to the chaos, and what comes with it.

I am accustomed to the loneliness of losing, and having to heal.

I am accustomed to being broken, and having to pick up the pieces to recreate myself as a mosaic.

I am accustomed to heartache, the grief, the defeat, the pain, the stress, and having to mask it in order to succeed.

What I was not accustomed to, or ever thought I'd have to learn, is learning to love again after losing. Learning to trust, not to simply fill a void and create a short-term bond. Learning that I am worthy, even when I feel as if I am not. And learning that in order to love again? You need to understand that not everyone will understand.

I had a co-worker say something to me this last week:

“You're ability to juggle your personal issues, while pushing forward, blows my mind. I could learn a lot from you."

What he doesn't understand is the only thing to learn? Is to learn that there is no guidebook. There are not rules. There are no timelines.

You just do it. Day in, and day out. You simply just do it. And he is doing it, he just doesn't realize it quite yet.

And to be honest? I get these a lot...

"How do you stay so strong?"

"How did you manage to recreate your entire future?"

"Don't you still love him?"

I'm strong because I fought to be that way. I recreated my future because I had no choice. And lastly, of course I do. I always will.

But there comes a point where you have to make a decision:

Do you want to stay in this spot, or do you want to move on, and make him proud?

Loving and living after losing is a difficult path to navigate.

I've been reading this book, The Body Keeps the Score, explaining how traumatic situations affect our psych for years, especially if gone unaddressed. Your hormones never settle- leaving you in fight, flight, freeze mode.

From the age of 12, I will be 30 in September, I have lost a significant amount of people who directly impacted my life.

Coming from my psychiatrist: "All you have ever known is grief."

To the ones struggling to overcome old survival skills- this one's for you.

To the ones struggling with deciding if it's okay to move on- this one's for you.

To the ones struggling with grief, pain, suffering, and chaos- this one's for you.

To the ones who have had the deck stacked so high against them from the time they were born- this one's for you.

No matter what cards you are dealt- it's up to you to make the decisions. If it's a wrong one, you make it right.

Learning to love again, and to live again, after losing is different for everyone.

Hell, living and loving is hard for everyone in general.

Not one single person is the same but there is one thing I can say:

We all have pain. We all have trauma. We all have issues. We all have bad days. We all have loss. We all have grief. We all have past chapters we'd rather not ever read again.

We all, every single one of us, have something to not only work on, but work towards.

The moment you realize that is the moment you take your life back.

The moment you embrace the person you were, and the person you are today, is the moment you are free.

This one's for you- whoever you are.

Xx,

M