It can be hard.
It can be so hard to pick yourself off the floor when your dreams and hopes lie in a shattered mess all around you. Hard to breathe when you’ve cried your heart out because you got one email, one more email. And it’s challenging to explain the torrent of emotions that hits when your eyes run over the words, “We regret to inform you…”, how time seems to come to a standstill, and yet everything seems to be moving in fast forward at the same time.
It gets even harder when life moves on, failing to even acknowledge your pain while you’re curled up in a breathless heap because daggers cut through your ribs with each inhale, and sometimes you actually wish that the next exhale be your last. Now, you know that you’re not trying to be dramatic, but you feel it, feel the “clink” as your glass heart breaks again and again with each rejection. How the sun in your eyes dims with each shut door. You alone know how much strength it takes to push your body out of bed each morning, to function and smile and show up to be a million different things to a million different people each and every day.
See, life does not help us get over the times when we pour our hearts and souls into projects and plans, and it all falls through; it does not even teach us how to get through periods where we invest most, if not all of our resources to follow a track and it leads nowhere. Nobody tells us how to survive; we are just expected to. There’s not even a mourning period, once the first rounds of “ah ehyaaa, sorry o“, have been passed and bandied around, it’s back to business as usual, and you’re left with the open, bloody hole in your heart.
The good news is, it does get easier. To breathe, at least. With each sunrise, the fist around your heart unclenches just a little more, and as more air fills your lungs, it takes a little less energy to roll off the not-so-wrong side of your bed and live.
But are you really living now? I mean, you’re functional and that is clear to see, but we both know there’s more going on beneath the surface. I can see it, and you know it too. You’re scared. No, you’re utterly terrified. You’re living because life is noisy and busy and distracting, you’re functioning because you do not need to think to do and that absolves you of the responsibility to try. Because you now walk around with grey clouds that promise thunder. and lightning that crackles every time you even think about trying. “Don’t you remember?” your mind whispers as your eyes fill with tears and your heart aches anew. “Why even bother? Why put us through that again?” your heart demands. And to be fair, what is the point? What makes you think that trying will work this time, if it hasn’t worked before now? What’s different now? The real answer? Absolutely nothing. Nothing is different, not even you, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.
If you do not try again though, and you choose to live a functional, but totally unfulfilling life, you might lose nothing. That’s the alternative option, and nobody would blame you for taking it. After all, millions have, and they’re okay. Soulless cogs in the wheel of capitalism and existence, but fundamentally okay. But then again, you might lose the future you were meant to have. The one where things work out and you experience life as a new and exciting adventure, looking forward to your future with eagerness and optimism as opposed to the trepidation you feel right now. You know, the life that you think about and you feel the excitement coursing through you as you imagine doing what you love with who you love, in an environment that you wake up and actually want to be in each day? Yeah, that life.
The only solution, then? Try anyways.
Yuuuuppppp. Try regardless of, despite, even though, and may try because. Try ashamed, try clueless, try scared witless. But try anyway. Because that’s the only way you have a chance. Because that’s the only way you get to live. Because the only way the pain will ever be worth it, is if you turn this whole thing around. Better still, if you let God turn it around for you. But you’re going to have to try, my darling. And I’ll be right here, trying too.
You see the funny thing about this is, you think I’ve been talking to you this whole time.
Your partner in weak knees and a trembling heart,
Gabrielle…
