Restless.

Andrew's laptop battery is at 52% and dropping, so I'm going to make this more a stream of consciousness than a developed post. Mostly because I need it, and partly because I hope someone skims this while browsing through the endless expanse of blogs on this site and happens across this. If that's you, I hope you read this and relate, maybe even find something that settles with you.

Listen. Carefully. Without all that internal bullshit you claim to be so important. The daily strife and let downs that come with age - the realities and responsibilities that are required of you, regardless if you've invited them into your life or not. Let it go. Give yourself permission to take a break for a minute and really dig into what's bothering you. 

I know this isn't what you had anticipated. Who could have foreseen what being 23-years-old would entail? But remember that you're only 23. You're old enough to realize that life is difficult and as a result there will be days you feel defeated and inconsequential. But refrain from allowing yourself to only see who are by the wrongs taken against you, by the scars that now seem to litter the soft pink flesh of where wrist meets arm. 

You are too young to bend beneath this and become the calloused shell of the entity you instead wished to become. 

46%. Life is not black and white, invite yourself to take refuge in that. In shades of gray comes beauty - an endless ability to live without boundaries, without inhibition. Escape the confines of your mind and the walls you've put up against yourself. 

Don't make it a habit to find comfort in your sadness or she may never leave. Treat her like a child. Sit with her from time to time, take her into your lap and study her, allowing her to take your full attention. But at night, you must be strong. No matter how much she may beg and scream, you must be strong. You cannot pacify her by letting her into your bed or she will stay with you, taking refuge in the dark shadows of your skin. And as you grow, so she will shrink away until she is no longer needed. 


Stand up to what has been given to you. Take pride in what is asked of you, not matter how difficult the task. These moments and how you handle them will define you, not your moments of weakness nor the shortcomings you find an easy excuse. 


Be strong. Above all else have courage and faith - if in nothing else, than have it in yourself. You are not the drinking vice that grips your mother, you are not the jobs you have been repeatedly turned down for, you are not the cancerous tumors in you grandmother's brain, you are not the woman your father had an affair with, you are not the fire that destroyed your best friend's childhood home. 

Let. It. Go.


You are none of these things, so pardon the offenses they have brought against your understanding of what life is. They're apart of life, but they are nothing more than insignificant details. Do not allow them to pock your face, to rot beneath your fingernails, or wait in the wet recesses of your brain like some forgotten grenade. 


LET. IT. GO!

Scream until you feel the blood in your throat rise. Run until your bones break. Cry until you've thrown up. And when you are done, face all those things, hold them up to the light of your heart so you may see how they are transparent.

They are not you.

And when you know this as an indefinite truth, kiss them on the mouth and send them forever into the night. Release forever what it is you see as black and white!

They are not you. Be strong. 


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