The Things I Know For Sure: #1 - Everything Changes

You don't get to hold onto very much with certainty.  The first time I really learned this was at 12 years old, when I was inundated with uninvited depression and suicidal thoughts and began several years of hospitalizations and psychiatric medication trials.  The second time was at 13 years old, when my dad, after a year of sobriety, left my mom and our house to start a different life none of us knew he had been considering.  The third was at 14 years old, when someone very close to me started a years-long battle with anorexia and attempted suicide by taking over 100 pills in our high school bathroom after school.

All of these things broke my heart and left me feeling like I was stepping off the edge of a canyon.  There was NOTHING to hold onto.  There was no guidebook for how to process those events.  I lost my trust in the world because it wasn't playing fair.

The bittersweet silver lining, which I was to learn, is that everything changes, even the bad stuff.  I have emerged from my depression every time I have sunk into it.  My dad stabilized his life and found space in it for growth and love.  The dear one who was stuck in starvation and darkness is now getting her Ph.D. in clinical psychology and helping others with their own emotional pain.

Two years ago, I was going through a scary and all-energy-consuming physical issue.  It came out of nowhere and shook my body with such consistency that I couldn't sleep normally, couldn't eat properly, and couldn't exercise.  Focusing my mind at work was impossible and I had no energy to socialize or do more than the bare minimum amount of self care.  So many of the tools that I NEEDED in order to cope were taken away from me.

I called up my dear one, the one who had been through an eating disorder, depression, chronic pain, and so many other things herself, and tearfully pled with her to tell me that I was going to be okay.  This is what she told me with absolute confidence in her voice:  You are going to be okay.  Either you will get better or you will learn to deal with it better.  

It's was so simple and yet it meant the world to me.  It meant that no matter how shitty I felt or what I was going through, either the issue would resolve or I would learn the strategies and shortcuts I needed to adapt to my altered life.  And this wisdom came from a person who I KNEW had lived it herself - as Ranier Maria Rilke would put it, had live the questions and gradually lived her way through to the answers .

These are the things that I remember to tell myself now:  You're learning how to hold everything you treasure in an open palm rather than a death grip, and you'll never learn it perfectly, and that's okay because you're human.  Even if you can't predict what the world will throw at you or embrace you with, you know on your best days that you've got to live in the moment and savor the fleeting beauty crammed into it.  On your worst days, you can hold onto the knowledge (or ask your dear ones to remind you) that you've made it this far and that it's damn near impossible (like neurobiogically impossible) that you will feel EXACTLY THE SAME every day for the rest of your life.  Let go, breathe, say YES to it all.