it is around this time every year that I start to get really angsty about everything because I never really anticipate making it through the year. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mean that in the 'grab a switch blade, we're about to throw ourselves a morbid pity party' kinda way, so y'all better put those thoughts to rest. What I mean is, I am a grossly organised person with a meticulous eye for the little details in life, and despite that, I don't plan very far ahead.
For a long time, I let myself be closed off to love and people who I felt were my world because the truth is, I didn't feel deserving of a good love. I refused to let myself believe that I was worthy of good and that the people who love me do so regardless of how good or bad I think myself to be. But this, this was probably one of my life's greatest mistakes.
But, here's the thing about sadness that nobody ever tells you: it is not linear, but neither are you. Like all things in life, it will come and go, and more often not, you will have literally no control over it.
Excerpts from my journal: I felt a wave of calm being swept over me. A moment of stillness to wash away all the fear and the worry that had settled into my bones. For the first time, I was stepping into the unknown without the fear of chaos.
I come from a home of slammed doors, clenched jaws, tight fists, and bated breath. I have spent a near 23 years waiting for the muted rage that runs through all of our veins to settle and yet, here we are, still slamming knuckles against the wall.
The days are dark, and the light seems as though it will never shine upon us, but we’re going to power through anyway and hold on to the most powerful thing we have, hope. The tides will inevitably change, and our paths will too often stray from the linear one we’d hoped for it to stay on, but that isn’t always a bad thing; sometimes what we need is different to what we want and it is in the right timing and situation that all which is right for us will align and make its self apparent.
On the good days and the bad, I reached out for my comfort book and read it cover to cover until my little brain pleaded with me to change it up a bit and read something new. But, my goodness, that book changed me.
And that’s the biggest difference in this new year of life. For so long I have lived for everyone else that I forgot that I’m a person too, and I deserve to be cared for by me.
On some mornings I still stand in front of the mirror for a minute too long and have to fight the urge to knock all of these products off the sink, but I have to take a moment to remind myself that this is for me. It hasn't always been for me, but it is now. I owe it to myself to be kind to my body, mind, and soul.
