It Gets Better

Life has its ups and downs, and sometimes it can seem like you're being dealt more downs than up.  It can seem like there's nothing on the horizon or like your life is never going to change.   For some of us that's a hard thing to consider and it scares us.  People do incredible things when they are scared both good and bad.

I am a survivor.  There aren't many who know my whole story and I don't think there are many who ever will.  What I went through, and what I did, are not things I feel comfortable sharing with the world so you'll forgive me for not going into detail here.  What I do want to share with the world is hope. 

At my lowest, I did not believe it was possible to meet anyone in this world who had compassion.  I did not believe my future could bring anything that would make me happy.  I was fixated on everything that was bad and everything that had gone wrong in my life and I had been trapped in a vortex of negativity surrounded by dark clouds.

No-one knew and I never told anyone how I felt.  I survived, but for a time that's all my life was, survival, I lived for the sake of living with nothing spurring me on.  I ate and I slept, day after day.  My monotony was eventually broken, little by little things changed.   Small glimmers of hope shone through.  Fast forward through the years up to today and I look back on all I have been through and the one thing I take away from it all is this, the future is never as dark as we fear it will be. 

I know where I am today, I know where I was that day and I know that I couldn't imagine being here at the time.  I am glad I survived because my life did change.  I had more and more ups and less downs to contend with.  I have had moments since, when I have felt like there is nothing on my horizon - but to borrow from something my teenage self once wrote - "A world exists beyond the horizon, just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.  Seeing isn't believing, believing is seeing" - just because it may seem like there's nothing coming, doesn't mean that's the way it is.

You just have to make it through.  It gets better, it really does, you've just got to hold on and believe and it will come to you.  I felt alone, I felt afraid, I felt like no-one cared - but I was wrong.  There were people around me who cared about me, I was just too blind to see it.  When I think about the people in my life now, I am eternally grateful, and to all of them I care deeply for them.  I know a few of them are having a hard time at the moment and that things may seem dark or bleak, but I believe in them, I believe they are worth so much more than they feel right now.  Even the most beautiful, precious and magnificent diamonds in this world were all found in the midst of coal, surrounded by darkness and buried deep under mountains of Earth.  Where you are does not define who you are and how you are treated does not define how you deserve to be treated.