It’s actually hard to write about fighting something when you find yourself still caught up in the midst of it. I wish I could come up with some magic trick up my sleeve and make all the pain and despair go away. I have tried looking up for resources elsewhere and turned up to Google for solace but turns out no one out there seemed to have a quick way to solve the problem either.
So, I said to myself: You can choose to see it as a lesson learned resulting from another epic episode of failure, or you can choose to find its origins in an inadequate, unlucky birth. You can blame it on the odds wrongfully playing against you. The truth is that if you ever choose to stop trying, and if you decide to stick to the “I’d rather not”, you’ll probably end up with a lot of “What if” thus continuing the unfairness of life by default.
The truth is it will take time and energy and probably some more battling and all sorts of other things you feel have deserted you right now. The good thing though is that it could all come back sooner than you think; in three steps actually.
1. Get Real
Writer Barbara Kingsolver said:
“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”
The first step is most likely the toughest one for many reasons. You have to realize that you are a wrecking mess and your life is falling apart and the person you are is changing when really, you never asked for any of this. You’ll be sad and feel like you do not deserve any of the things that are happening to you. And you will be right but as mentioned above, it’s not about fairness.
2. Fight The Powerlessness
“I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don’t know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prison. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.”
The words of Haruki Murakami resonated with me because some days – actually most days – that’s how I felt, like all the things that were happening to me today were nothing else but the result of my past choices. I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that I had taken all sorts of wrong decisions and that I had now to pay the bitter price of their consequences. I had built up my own demise day after day and was now locking myself away from the rest of the world because I was too afraid of my next move. What if I was to take another bad decision? When would I – if ever – be back on track?
3. Reclaim Fairness
“You just have to keep driving down the road. It’s going to bend and curve and you’ll speed up and slow down, but the road keeps going.”
― Ellen DeGeneres
Well, it sounds like an easy thing to say but if you think about it, there are no other options. The world keeps spinning and all around you, people carry on with their daily routines and you feel a bit more lonely and isolated every day. Simply put, things will probably not get drastically better overnight but that’s not what matters. What does is the use you will make of the time that you’ll be granted tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on while the world keeps moving and you’re not.
Chances are life will probably be unkind to you again. Maybe someone you’ll fall in love with, someone who will not love you back or perhaps you’ll lose your job, or someone you care about dearly will be sick. Maybe you will be sick or worst comes to worst, all of those things will happen to you.
All you have to do is take it one step at a time. One step out of your bed, then one step outside until you start walking down the road and find your pace again. All you need to do is show up.
Featured photo credit: Untitled via flickr.com
