I have felt lonely and depressed for too long. I have been losing all the energy slowly as I watched it drain from my body atom by atom. I have come to realize that nothing is scarier than consciously having to watch your own descent and not being able to stop it.
But, how can one gain it all back? How can one simply get up and go through life like evil doesn’t exist? Like poverty, heartbreaks, detachment among people don’t exist. It’s certainly not easy to get up and keep going in a reality that is utterly bleak, gloomy, and overshadowed by crimes, selfishness, frivolity…squalor of a world lacking spiritual existence.
I often dreamed of simpler times, but I saw the wickedness of this world and I realized I had two options: stay miserable or be the creator of my own world. I chose the latter.
I often felt like quitting, but there was something so invigorating about taking matters in your own hands, taking the reins and leading your life in whatever direction you wanted. So, I gave life another chance in the hope that I’d forget the sorrows of the past. I had to let them go. I had to set them free to set myself free.
I thought my sorrows and my bad decisions had me imprisoned, but then I realized I was the one holding on to them for I knew nothing else.
Starting over was scary. Scarier than the past which was familiar. I was used to it. But then I realized I was holding on to what I knew because I was frightened to make a change; because change felt like stepping on some unknown, untested land; it felt as uncomfortable as waking up your neighbors on a Sunday morning with a drilling machine.
So, I let it all go. Slowly. Steadily.
And it worked.
Here I am now. Independent. Unconventional. Fierce. Daring.
I create my own rules. I eat breakfast for dinner; I wear sunglasses in winter; I polish my nails with lipstick when I am in a rush because you don’t have to wait for it to dry, and I let the wind blow into my hair even though it’s freezing outside. The wind makes me smile. I feel how the cold is slowly tiptoeing to my chest and I feel how it prickles my face and it makes me feel alive.
I moved on because it wasn’t just a challenge. I moved on because I owed it to myself. I moved on because I wanted to be happy. I moved on because I had the right and because it was the time to move on already.
We cannot save the people around us – we can only help them get through a situation by offering them our support and our understanding. We cannot be the doers and the makers of their lives. We cannot be their heroes and we cannot be those that lift them up.
You have one responsibility–to save yourself. Saving others will make you feel good about yourself, but it won’t solve your problems. It won’t make others feel good about themselves either. It is why you can only be there for someone through tough times, but you cannot fight their battles. We all learn through our own pain and through our own mistakes.
You have only one battle: saving yourself while trying to be better every day as you move forward. Putting someone in a safe bubble and protecting them from the cruelty of this world is acceptable for children only. Eventually, we all have to go through the downs in life.
Do you know what’s so good about the downs in life? The pain.
Pain forms you. Don’t quit because of the pain, on the contrary, look pain in the eyes and say: You will make me stronger, so why should I fear you?
Now go on, dare, and seize the day. Take every failure as a lesson and never stop moving forward. It is going to suck in the beginning, but it is just part of that formation process.
Make your own rules about life. Then break them if necessary.