We all know, or have known, people whom we wanted to help. People who we see going through their own Hell and can’t get out of it. To varying degrees, most of us have been there in our lives. We have lost jobs, lost people, and lost ourselves. I spent a lot of years chasing the wrong people, and all it did was push me further away from myself. In the end, though, there wasn’t a lot that people could do to help me.
I had to help myself.
Until you get deep into abuse of some form, that’s generally how it works. If you want to be saved, you have to save yourself.
Sure, it’s very helpful to have people in your corner, cheering you on and counseling you, but you have to be the one to fuel the fire. You have to find the reason to get out of bed. You have to find the reason to go to the gym. You have to be the reason to change the things you aren’t satisfied with.
Because there’s a point where you get tired of the pep talks, of the advice, and if you have decided something’s wrong with you, then nothing anyone says will get inside of you.
And heck, it’s easy for us to give the advice, to feel like we have wisdom to pass along, because we’re not there. We don’t feel the self-doubt, the loneliness, the frustration, the deep apathy, or whatever else they may be facing. It’s too easy to say – keep your chin up, bucko! – because if they do, great, if they don’t, well, that’s a drag, but that’s on them.
Offering free advice is too easy, and too painless, and it can make things feel all the worse because then you feel like it SHOULD be easy to get over these things, but you can’t.
You need to know when to offer something and when to just shut up and listen. Something most of us don’t do nearly enough.
Life can feel so crushing as it is, and when you are going through something, it pushes the sun even further away. And you just want that one break, that one glimmer of hope to help you through. You want it so badly that you’ll latch onto a fool’s hope, a hope that isn’t real, but which you believe in like a new god. You need something, even that false glimmer, to just keep going.
But as I said, you have to have a moment of self-realization that breaks you free. You have to find the reason to get back in the game. You have to find that you’re worth fighting for. That life, this one life we’re given, is too precious to let slip away.
Someone else can’t tell you that; you have to feel it and believe it on your own. You have to get up off the mat and keep fighting.
But why?
Because you’ve been through too much to give up.
Because even when you doubt yourself, you are a fighter, because only a fighter would have made it as far as you have.
Because this silly, stupid, tragic, beautiful life of ours has too many moments that we deserve to experience.
You need to cling to your passions, your friends, your loves, and yourself.
You need to amplify that drive inside of yourself, that chant that has kept you going. The doom won’t go away, not wholly, but you need to drown it out.
We are the worst bullies we will ever deal with, and are more cruel than anyone can be to us, but we can overcome ourselves.
Like everything, though, it takes a spark.
It takes a moment where you refuse to go down to the mat.
And all of this is so much cake to a diabetic.
Useless.
Useless unless you believe it for yourself.
Useless until you can push yourself forward.
And again, it looks so easy from the outside.
So easy to say – just go to the gym. Just go talk to that person. Just go apply for that job. Just do whatever that, to me, seems like a cut-and-dry thing.
But it isn’t.
All of us are broken in our own ways. We have our faults, our flaws, and our damage.
Unless you can come to someone with ears open and mouth closed, to hear what they need from you, then maybe it’s best to just be quiet.
While it is on the person to overcome the biggest hurdle, themselves, it doesn’t make them feel better to have things boiled down to something so that it seems simple.
It isn’t easy.
It isn’t easy speaking to someone, because what if they reject you?
It’s not easy ‘just applying for that job’ because it’s never about you being able to do the work, it’s about ten other things that are more important to the company, but don’t get that job done.
It isn’t as easy as going to the gym, because you still have to fight your biology, bad habits, and what may have become a coping mechanism for you.
So what can you do?
You help when asked, keep your mouth shut unless it’s to tell someone they are great, and just cheer your people on.
And if you are going through ‘it,’ whatever that is, keep going.
Sometimes we need to go through it, through Hell, and all we can do is fight our way through it. Life isn’t always about lessons, but about surviving.
So, survive.
And don’t give up.
Our goals change.
Our dreams evolve.
Our needs and our wants can be.
That doesn’t mean you give up; it means you find other things to keep you going. It means you lean on the people who are there for you without a cost.
It means you keep working on loving yourself enough to keep fighting.
For me, I will never believe in myself, or my ability to do anything.
But I keep going, I keep DOING to spite myself.
Because the worst of me doesn’t get to decide my future.
I do.
And you do too.
And sometimes you just need to SCREAM or SING to drown out the negativity inside your head, but that’s why they made music, isn’t it?
Keep chugging along, friend.
Keep chugging.
Save yourself.
…c…
