The Twenty-Second One.

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 Evening,

Subheading: Oh no, not I. I will survive. (Probably.)  

It can be an insufferable feeling when you realize that you will in fact survive most hardships. It's like time is an annoying know-it-all, and it knows ev-uh-ry-thing about everyone. 

What do you mean, this breakup didn't actually kill me?

What do you mean, I have to keep living after someone I love has died? 

We want to scream crazy things like, "I'll never be happy again!" and then hold onto all of it like some sort of bizarre oath we've sworn. The pain we are in contorts reality until we believe that if we don't go to the grave miserable like we promised, we must be liars. We ask ourselves how much we could have really loved them if we are able to move on? 

Our level of pain is used to try to quantify loyalty, but to who? The people that love(d) us? As if they'd see this diagram, be happy to know we've frozen ourselves in a moment long past and say, "Yeah, wow, you really do love me." As if loving them, or being loved by them, was ever in question or up for debate in the first place. It isn't, it wasn't, it just can't carry you forward any longer. 

We have to stop imagining that we see the full picture of our lives and their trajectories, because we won't until the moment we die, and what can we even do with that information then? 

We have to learn to make choices based on what we feel and know now, not what we imagine we will feel or know later. Only by living and loving fully in each moment, each day, can you find a way to appreciate an ending when it inevitably comes,  because nothing feels left unsaid. 

Stop declaring that it's winter the day after summer and denying yourself the reflection and reverence that comes with the brilliance of fall. Let yourself grieve, but also laugh, be lost, rage, love- because none of that is a betrayal. Being kind to yourself isn't an admission that you didn't love someone, it is the opposite, and the kindest gift we can offer anyone: letting them know we will be ok. 

You will be ok. 

I hope you enjoyed this stuff, and come back for more things. 




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