The Promise of Tomorrow

The last several months, and I guess if I'm being honest, years, have been tough. I've lost friends I thought I would be friends with forever, and that's okay. I'm okay, despite the things I've gone through. Sometimes I miss the way things used to be in different points of my life, but I've learned lessons through them all. And I guess that's a lot of what life is. Just learning from our experiences and the choices we make throughout it. The biggest one being, don't change who you are just to fit in, just to have "fun," or to distract yourself from everything you've tried so desperately to bury because it's too much to deal with or handle. 

I've made a lot of decisions in my life that I don't consider wise choices and most of them I wish I had never made. I wish I would have stayed the course and kept up with my beliefs and morals and standards, but I didn't. Granted, those choices have made me who I am today. And I am getting there. Slowly, but surely, I am turning into the person I've envisioned myself being for a long time. I think I always knew I'd get there the hard way, no matter how much I wanted to take shortcuts. Even trying to take shortcuts I got distracted. I LET myself get distracted. I was never happy. I let people determine my happiness and so I was constantly disappointed. Mainly because not everyone has the same heart and mind that I do, so they do not see things from my perspective and why I have the standards and ideals and beliefs that I do. I won't get into those because I don't want to stir up arguments and debates. 

What I do want you all to know, is that everyone is different. Everyone makes choices, good and bad, and usually the bad ones reveal themselves to be worse than we could have imagined further down the road, after the fact. Hindsight becomes 20/20. If only our foresight was. But that's where we have those few, rare people in our lives who have lived those bad decisions already and don't want to see anyone else go down the paths they went down. And usually they have no idea how to get it through your head as to WHY the things you're doing are bad, and they get upset and yell at you and tell you you're doing stupid things and it won't end well. Which just results in you getting mad at them and a fight breaks out and it wears you both down so then neither one of you are in the right frame of mind to have an actual conversation to calmly explain both sides. 

I will tell you a secret though. Call it a harsh truth that pretty much everyone denies. Those people who want to pull daredevil stunts, who tell you they want to go out and "just live and have fun," who change drastically and hang out with new people and try to convince you they are good people but you notice the changes in the person? Yeah, those people are running. They are trying their hardest to run from the demons that torment them day and night, the things that happened to them in the past they can't deal with because it hurts too much. Because they hurt too much. It's pain most can't fathom, nor should you want to. Unfortunately, all of that stuff catches up with them. And it generally doesn't end well. I'd say 99% of the time, it doesn't end well. So please, listen to those of us who have gone through our fair share of hell and have somehow survived. We just want to keep you from having to go through the same horrors that we did. It haunts you for the rest of your life until you figure out how to defeat those demons, ghosts and skeletons in the closet. The monsters under the bed. It's everything no one can see and doesn't believe in. Those are the things we are afraid of and we shouldn't be. The people you associate with should fight for you and with you, uplift you and remind you how incredible you are when you forget, help you and support you. Notice their effort. Actions always speak louder than words. 

Please don't fight us off when we tell you something that sounds completely crazy to you. Something you don't understand. You may not understand it yet, but we do. And we don't want you to understand it because no one should have to go through the things it takes for you to be able to understand it. Those people care about you more than anything or anyone else. I know they annoy you, frustrate you, piss you off, possibly even hurt you. But I'm telling you. Take a step back, calm yourself, and just listen to them. Let them tell you of the things they endured to get to the exact position they are in telling you about everything. And know they don't just talk about those things freely or very often. But it is a part of them and you need to respect that. Take their advice. Even if you don't agree with it, just once, try it and see what happens. It will probably surprise you. 

Some of us have taken more than one for the team and we are still here. We are still here to tell the rest of you to keep your chins up, come to us when your struggling with anything, and let us help you. Let us turn our struggles and pain into something good and beautiful for you. Let us help you. Please don't push us away. 

I'm sorry to ramble on for so long, but this has been on my mind a lot lately and sometimes it frustrates me to no end because I don't know how to properly explain this. So just please, if you have anyone in your life that gets mad at you and tells you the same thing over and over again, they aren't trying to piss you off, they aren't trying to hurt you, they are trying to help you and they don't know how to get you to listen to them. Stop for just a minute and actually listen to them. Listen to their stories. I guarantee that you will find truth in what they are saying because their stories will be eerily similar to yours. There are those of us who just know people and the things they do, their intentions, the patterns, the subtle differences in you because of your choices and the people you're around. We care about you more than you know and we really just want to help. So I apologize for all of us out there who are just trying to help and don't know the words. You don't know the depths of our sorrow and pain to get to the point of being able to help anyone else. 

Just know this. No matter how much you try to bury it, hide it, wear a mask, treat us badly to push us away because we see every part of you, the good and bad and everything in between. We know you. Even when you say we don't, even when you don't want us to. We are here to help. In ways that shouldn't make sense, and probably never really do, but nevertheless, please just take the time to listen. Don't pressure us, don't give us faces like you are super pissed, just give us the space and respect and time we need to find the right words. It isn't easy to talk about. We love you. And one day, with the promise of tomorrow, things will start getting better, little by little, if you let them.