In my exhausted state, I was trying to be profound tonight.
I was reminded by a friend of something I have said before which is "There is beauty in the breaking."
I told her from the middle of a breakdown it doesn't look so beautiful and she said maybe I just need to blink a few times.
I told her I thought that was profound, I just wasn't sure how yet. And then I started writing and this is what I came up with.
"It will get worse before it gets better but I promise you it will get better."
I'm waiting for the better.
I'm waiting for the day when I can say "My cousin is dead" and it doesn't hit me like a ton of bricks
I'm waiting for the day when I can look at the people who love me and not want to push them away
I'm waiting for the moments that I can savor, when I can look around and think "If this isn't happy, I don't know what is." I have a collection of these moments. I'm waiting for the day when I can find more to collect, like finding a pile of sea shells someone left on the sand.
I was watching this movie the other night and one of the main characters said this quote I wish I could remember exactly but it was something along the lines of "You are have such a cynical outlook on life for such a privileged person." And I don't know why but it was something about that quote that made me stop for a minute. Because it's right.
I was talking to a friend a while ago and I said that, while being burned, I'd rather be known as the girl on fire than the girl who burned in the blaze. And what I meant was that I wanted people to see beauty in the breakdown. I don't want to just burn slowly, I want to be on fire.
And on Monday of this week, I was sitting in the backyard, being loud and crazy and cartwheeling across the wet grass and pretending I was talking to someone and I was talking about what it meant to be alive. I said in this moment I feel alive. I feel like my soul is alive. But in those bad moments, I'm alive in those too. Those dark moments, they remind me I am alive. Even if what I am feeling is painful and heartbreaking, I am feeling something. I do not cease to exist because things are hard. I never stopped being alive.
And in writing all this, it made me wonder if perhaps my friend is right. So things are hard, and I feel broken. But never once have I stopped being alive. And even though I'm burning maybe it doesn't mean I'm turning to ash but I'm becoming the girl on fire, stronger for it. Maybe the only way through is to feel every heartbreaking, agonizing minute of it. No one gets to go through life without pain. and so I get more than my fair share. Even in the pain, I never stopped being alive. Even though I can look at myself and think how everything is a disaster, maybe it's a beautiful disaster. Maybe instead of burning alive, I'm the girl on fire.
I believe there is more than what my eyes are seeing.
And yes, despite going through a time where all I can seem to feel are the heartbreaking, agonizing moments of everything, I do believe still that there is beauty in the breaking.
I believe things will get better. Maybe they have to get worse before they get better but they will get better.
I believe that sometimes you can't wait for someone to save you, sometimes you have to save yourself. In the end you have to want to change, you have to want to be saved, you have to want to live. In the end there's no one else, only you and the sound of your heart. And you'll have to learn to listen to what it is saying.
And the sound of my heart? It's saying "Keep going. I promise you things will get better. And while you're waiting for the tides to change, keep looking for sea shells."
And so I will. I'll look for sea shells in this storm. And instead of burning I'll become the girl on fire.
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