Until We Happen to Live

For the first time in my life, I’m not afraid of the future.

Woah, we’re starting off strong. Big step from Approaching My Quarter Life Crisis, I Didn’t Think I’d Live This Long, and The Reckoning // The Relapse. Kind of feels terrifying to say that, but it’s the truth. 

I feel like Kevin McAllister in Home Alone running out of his house yelling, “Hey, I’m not afraid anymore! I said, I’m not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I’M NOT AFRAID ANYMORE!” And of course no one is hearing me, but that isn’t the point. It’s in the way I carry myself, not what I announce.

I have come to realize that fear is such a disease. It serves you nothing but anxiety on a silver platter and controls you. Stepping back from it all, I realized control is just as much of an internal nag. It’s all an illusion. Life goes through its ebbs and flows. You can have everything planned… until life happens. Because that is life. We don’t choose what happens, but we choose how we react to it.

I’m learning the beauty in surrendering. Surrendering is not synonymous with forfeiting your autonomy over your life. It’s more so the quiet knowing that you cannot lose what is meant for you, paired with the trust in yourself and your journey to make the right decisions when the time comes.

Everything I need, I have within myself. I don’t need anyone else to give me anything. If you’re in my life, it is simply because you add to it. The more I pour into myself, the more love surrounds me. It has taken me a long time to internalize what that really means. I’m not perfect at it, but I am learning to integrate it. The more I choose myself, the more magnetic I become. This is coming from a person who has shrunk herself for years to be accepted, and (what I thought was) loved. You can clearly feel that  internal conflict bleeding through my previous writes. 

In the last year, I tried making more time for things that I love. I spoke out about what I needed to feel safe in my relationships. In that, I found a lot of distance created between me and a lot of things and people I thought I needed. What a painful position that is to be in. What I realized is that I lost myself, and I was living to please others. I had lost my sense of self, direction, whimsical nature, and, above all, my backbone. If I was finally doing more things that I wanted to, why aren’t the people I love here by my side? Why did I feel guilty for choosing my happiness?

In the end, I learned that if I’m too much, then they can go find less.

That became a bite that was much more than I could chew. It took not just time to realize, but to accept. Finally, you reach the breaking point. The point where it hurts so much more to stay in the bud than it does to bloom.

Bloom I did.

And things shifted quickly.

I’m not sure where life is taking me. For the first time, that doesn’t frighten me. It makes me full of wonder and excitement. I went from thinking, “How much more can I handle?” to wondering, “Show me how good this life can get.”

I understand people’s capacities may not match. It may not be that the care isn’t there, but the flow between two people may not meet the standards of the other. Love itself isn’t enough on its own, and feeling less than while simultaneously too much to someone else— especially someone you love— is gut wrenching. There becomes a point that you cannot force what isn’t working. 

I’m no longer sitting in my pain speculating if I matter. I know I matter. That internal shift occurred because I chose that my story counts. How I feel matters. I finally feel safe taking up space and speaking my truth. If someone doesn’t align with my energy, I’ve stopped ignoring the writing on the wall. I’m done forcing something to fit when it clearly doesn’t. Yes, I take up space— I have weight to me— but I’m no longer apologizing for it, and I will not renegotiate my worth. 

This journey is going to be one I want to tell. One I want to share. One that could help others. Simply put, it’s about a person finding themselves. Paradoxically, it’s about the opposition one feels whilst doing so. In actuality, it’s the messy bits; sharing the mountain climb, not just the finality of conclusion looking over the peak.

I can carry the whole world on one shoulder if I needed to. I proved that to myself. It took me way too long to realize that I didn’t need to. I was just making myself miserable. Realistically, I was proving nothing but my stubbornness, and my spine was so cracked my foundation caved in. That crack was the worst pain I think I’ve endured, but it led me back to myself.

Imagine how strong the strongest woman in your life is. I guarantee you her actual strength is a million times more than what you can imagine. I love being a woman. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Though strength is admirable, I have made peace with the fact that I don’t need to constantly prove my worth based on how much weight I can handle.

Life happens to us until we happen to live.

Perhaps the greatest freedom I’ve found is this: You cannot fuck up what is yours.