Sometimes I feel so far away. My mind can’t help but wander to all those places I hope to travel to. All those distant worlds. All those paintings on the walls. All those conversations with the ones I love. All those things that make me smile or laugh and for a split second, make me feel a sense of belonging and alignment. The things that remind me that this matters.

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How can I make my life be about these things rather than the things that make me feel so far away from who I am. How do I remain faithful to myself when the disconnect between how I feel and how I want to feel is wider than I can handle.

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Dissatisfaction conquers me and for a moment I am truly lost.

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It’s a peculiar feeling, almost like a bitter after taste or a dry throat that can’t cough up the right words. A knot in the stomach. A tightness constricting the lungs, suffocating and stealing breaths. It’s staying in bed until noon. To hide away and wait for it all to go away or maybe just disappear. Dissatisfaction is the enemy of gratitude and the companion to hopelessness. When it happens to me, it’s rockbottom, panic attacks, sweating from the stress, yelling fuck at the top of my lungs in my car while driving or crying after a hard day at work. It’s feeling trapped in a prison of my own making. 

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There have been moments in my life that brought me to my knees. Moments when I didn’t know who I was anymore. These experiences questioned my very existence leading me down a path that I feared I wouldn’t be able to escape. Life goes on, even if I can’t keep up with the pace. But each time is different. Sometimes the pain came unexpectedly through a surprise attack or it took a more direct approach like a head on collision.  In other instances, it was a slow creeping sensation that trickled in leaving me feeling like I was possessed. Taken over by the voices telling me how my world is ending, how I’m going to die, how I am unworthy, unnecessary and unlovable. I let my environment and circumstances dictate who I am and where I go. 

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I get lost.

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Finding my way back is like pressing the restart button. Each becomes a beginning, but with a new perspective, new options and new questions. The pain, struggle and suffering become my teachers. Lessons learned. Revelations of sorts. 

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It’s good pain.

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Reminders of what was and what can be if I’m not careful. That a chapter has ended and new one has begun. When I hit my lowest point—when I am defeated and broken, hope reaches out and I become open to the greatest change. Maybe I don’t ask for any of it but in many ways, the things that can’t be changed end up changing me. Because deep down, I’m more resilient and adaptable than I realize. Deep down, I want to find myself. I want to succeed. I want to love and respect the person I see in the mirror and I want to see that person become the best version possible.  

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I am enduring but a flicker in time. I am allowed to feel whatever it is I am feeling but I can’t let it consume me. As the narrator and main character of this story, I get to write each chapter as I experience it. I can choose to stay where I am, or try and find my way back home. To recenter, readjust my approach, heal and turn my scars into strengths that motivate me to chase my dreams and self actualize. Even though life isn’t as I imagined it to be, and even if I am weak at times, I am still strong enough to endure, grow, change, and become the person I have always wanted to become. 

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Breaking the negative feedback loop of beating myself, letting go of high expectations or perfectionism, accepting the devastation and allowing the hurtful emotions to flow through and not remain is the most difficult of all. Softening my approach to how I treat my mind, body, and spirit by returning to my roots and spending time with my thoughts as well as by reaching out to friends and family for support is what has guided me back to love. I give myself permission to be vulnerable and to feel all those things I need to feel and say all those things I need to say.  To take the heavy burden of life and to ask for help so that the pain can be alleviated through empathy, human connection and touch. It is simply a right of passage and an expression of what it means to be human. At the end of the day, we are all just trying to figure it out.

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Life is both beautiful and harsh at the very same time and it’s only by spending time with the ones I love and who love me that I am reminded of the marvel that is living. This is not a journey to take on alone, at least not when everything seems to be falling apart.

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I am so much more than just my pain, my struggles, my shame or my insecurities.  There is a light inside me that dims, flickers, or shuts off when life gets unbearable.  Sometimes it’s a person who takes away my power and turns it off. Sometimes life happens and turns it off. Sometimes I make mistakes or forget my purpose and I turn it off myself.  It can stay dark for seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and at it’s most insidious—years. 

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Sometimes the pain people carry is too much to handle. It’s enough to make them sad or numb until they die. It’s the greatest tragedy, that of missed connection, missed opportunity, missed belonging, missed calling and missed gratitude. 

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To stay alive is challenging, but to keep the soul alive is the hardest. Figuring out who am, what my purpose is, and how to design my life has been the greatest adventure of all.  It can’t always be pretty, enjoyable, delicious, sexy or exciting. The heartbreak is necessary to understand the full spectrum of emotion, contrast the light, and to appreciate the good times when they come. But even with all it’s imperfections, I can’t help but feel optimistic. I’m not going to be here forever so while I still remain, I want to make my life a work of art, painted with love and attention, filled with beauty, grace, gratitude, depth, texture, vision and all the things that remind me that this matters.