I wish I could be that amazing person that people think of when they think of strength. The kind they air tv specials about, write books about, the Bethany Hamilton types who never lose hope in the face of some kind of life altering circumstance.
Nah.
I’m the girl who kinda cries a lot.
The one with sleep issues because she worries too much.
The one who can’t stop wondering why he doesn’t call.
The one who doesn’t put on big girl pants for days at a time because the world has a way of kicking my butt.
I tend to congratulate myself on the little victories, like putting on makeup – because I trick myself into thinking that maybe, just maybe, I’ll leave the house today.
I tend to keep my worries more or less to myself, because they make me emotional – and feeling vulnerable in front of other people kinda sucks.
I tend to secretly expect the worst from people before I ever give them the chance.
I tend to over think.
I tend to underestimate.
And I tend to be a bit wordy. Bear with me.
This month has been hard. This year has been hard. Sometimes I just get so … so incredibly frustrated when the hits just seem to keep coming.
But do I have any right to be indignant? Do I have any right to expect better treatment in this life than other people receive? Not really, no. So instead of really staying angry, I’ve gotten sad instead. Which is honestly a bit scarier to me.
Sadness has a way of seeping into my skin like a sunburn…sucking the very air out of my lungs, and burying me at the bottom of some sickly distorted sea. The world becomes blurred, and I become so incredibly isolated within my own head, my own worries, my own feeling of helplessness – that the entire world fades into the grey. My days aren’t made up of events and exchanges, but thoughts – one self absorbed pathetic one leading me on a chain into the next, until finally sleep fitfully claims me before I wake up again in a room of filtered light. There I’ll lay for a while before moving, thinking of how it will all begin again. About how I don’t want it to. About how I’m terrified it won’t.
Those moments are me at my worst.
If there is one thing I’m truly terrified of, it’s this sadness. This parasite. Because I’ve been there. I’ve done that. Sometimes I still do. I’m sure everyone out there has known this deep feeling of quiet despair at some point or another in their lives, I don’t think I’m special in this. I think I’m human.
Worrying about the health I can never keep.
The job that I don’t have.
The degree I can’t complete.
The friends I always miss.
The music that won’t come out.
The boy I feel like I’m losing.
But at moments like these, there’s something I need to remind myself: I also think I’m more than human, because I have something more than this world. I have my faith, which is a constant challenge in the face of difficult circumstances exactly like the ones I face, the ones we all face all the time. It’s not good enough for me to put this faith in the back pocket of the “big girl pants” that I never have the energy to put on. It’s those times of no energy that you can best display that faith, right?
I think lately, I’ve been telling myself, “I know I have that faith in me. And one day, I’ll tap into it when there’s nothing else left.”
Not good enough, you baby.
Today is the day that you need it. Today is the day you tap into it. Today is the day that nothing left matters. Today is the day you put on your pants.
Well, today I did put on pants, and spent the day with my mom. She has a way of lightening the mood with the bizarrely whimsical matter of fact way she handles life – discussing heavily researched medicinal remedies for my plethora of health issues one minute, then imitating Marcel the Shell. I wish she knew how pretty she was.
I was able to pick up my camera and get my mind onto something other than my own problems, and stood outside in the lovely natural lighting and brisk Spring wind photographing her wearing items for my etsy shop. Her pale Northern skin and pixie-like features were worth capturing somehow…no matter how much she fought it, and soon I could hear our laughter ringing out in harmony with the click of my camera. The remaining hours of daylight we shared together in a coffee shop, enjoying the company and high speed internet while we each got our own work done.
When times are hard, I have to stop and recognize the good things that are right in front of me that can sometimes be taken for granted. Like remembering how much I love coming home. It’s not just the pretty brick structure, the thick copse of musical trees, the pine covered mountain, the acres of heathery fields. It’s the ones inside.
Tonight that was my dad. Sitting on the floor, spending his night putting his latest big hearted plan into action on the table before him. People throughout the town are coming to know him as the Idea Man, and I love this. Some people are just special … just have that ability to ignite a passion in people who have long since let their creative juices ebb rather than flow. What would the world do without people like him? Be a lot less productive, for one. But as I watched him stuffing letters of hope and encouragement, plans for the future, into dozens of envelopes for the entire community to see…people he doesn’t even know, but still wants to help – I began to think. Through his greater action plan and message of hope, he’s attempting to cure the general problem of isolation, and on a broader scale – sadness…that I have been feeling. This problem is so huge, and manifests in so many ways. Unemployment. Sickness. Family needs. Financial struggles. Economical hardships. The kinds of issues that small town communities run into. The kind of issues that humans run into.
He’s been preaching the higher answer for more years than I’ve been alive. I know it by heart. Why is it still sometimes so hard for me to put into action in my own life?
Because I’m lazy. Because I let my own sadness become debilitating. Because I use it as an excuse to put things off, to work less.
Maybe getting better isn’t as easy as deciding to put on my pants.
Maybe it’s more of a process, baby steps, like pre-pants…like the pajama jeans my parents got me that I’m wearing right now.
I’m revving up for something better.
I’m revving up for pants.
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