Don’t think you’re the only one who’s felt heartbreak beat a foreboding drum in their chest, or watched the person they love walk in the opposite direction. Don’t think you’re the only one who’s watched a grandmother pass, hanging onto their last breath, or had a dream crumble before their eyes. Don’t think you’re the only one who’s woken on the wrong side of the bed for months, who has a blanket pulled over their eyes distorting the way they see the world. Don’t think you’re the only one with a heaviness, with an exhaustion in your bones, with a gaping, person-sized hole beneath your ribs.
Don’t think you’re the only one going through something. We all are. We’re all trying to hold on.
I want you to know something right now. You’re not alone. I don’t say these words to placate you, to diminish you, to force you to ‘get over’ the emotions in your head. I don’t say these words to comfort you only in the moment, and for them to mean nothing when I walk away. I don’t say these words just to push you through the next week, next hour, next second.
I say these words because they’re truth.
Because there are thousands of people who have come before, and who will come after you, fighting and breaking and healing in the same ways. Because life is filled with moments of both beauty and pain, but we can find comfort in the fact that we’re not facing them by ourselves.
What’s happening to you hurts. It aches. It’s real and pressing and important to acknowledge. It’s important to let it hurt. It’s important to let yourself cry, and be raw, and be messy. It’s important to feel the emotions without restricting or telling yourself you’re weak for feeling them.
But then it’s also important to ground yourself. To know that heartbreak won’t define you, and that a person leaving doesn’t change who you are. To know that life may take you down a different path, but you will find your way in time.
It’s important to be human: to have, and feel, and express emotion. But it’s equally important to humble your humanness.
To realize that there are others who have gone through similar, or even worse things. To know that your experience is not the most important piece of the universe. To find ways to move on, to let go, to turn your pain into something beautiful. To bless others in the way they have blessed you in those low moments.
To show someone else they’re not alone.
I think, sometimes, we get wrapped up in our selfishness. Something happens and it’s as if the entire world stops. And it makes sense. Our lives have completely changed, we’ve watched a loved one leave this earth, we’ve lost the person whom we believed was our forever, we no longer have the job or status we let define us for so long, we don’t know who we are or how to move forward, etc. These feelings of fear and helplessness and anger are normal when tragedy shakes our foundation.
But we can’t let the negative circumstances of our lives convince us that we’re experiencing these things alone.
We can’t make our pain overrule everything to the point that we can’t even take the next step. We can’t let ourselves believe that no one on the entire planet has ever felt the way we’re feeling because that’s both unhealthy and untrue.
Feel your emotions. Acknowledge your pain. Reach out for help without feeling pitiful. Exist as the messy being you are. Don’t apologize for your healing. But don’t let your pain make you feel alone.
Because you’re not the only one.
Featured Image Credit: Jezael Melgoza
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