Someday, you’ll just wake up. There won’t be the ever-crushing presence of anxiety, perching on your chest. It’ll just be sun through the blinds or the blaring of an alarm clock. There’ll be breakfast or a rush out the door, but there won’t be that insidious beast in your mind asking you why you even bother with life.
Someday you’ll just roll out of bed. Your feet will find hardwood or carpet, your lungs will take in air and breathing won’t feel so much like a crime. It’ll be just as natural as it was meant to be. There won’t be a whisper in the back of your mind that every breath should belong to someone else and that you’re just wasting air.
Someday, beloved, you’ll be free. I know how hard it is to imagine. I know how the voices in your head scream that they will never go and that you will never let go. But someday you’ll see yourself in the mirror and not them.
Life is hard. There are no two ways about it. Whether you’re suffering in silence or you’re screaming out loud, life is hard. The unbearable weight of mental disorders can weigh down the strongest person. But you are not alone.
There is a beauty unique to loving yourself- so unique it cannot be fully described. It’s a state of being that you can’t even begin to fathom and sometimes it just sneaks up on you. You wake up and when your feet hit the floor and you breathe in, you realize that you’re okay. You can’t always pinpoint an exact moment or experience, but suddenly you know in a soul-deep level that you’re okay.
Beloved, I have seen depravity. I have seen depression. I have seen suicide, anxiety, and anorexia. I have seen bipolar, divorce, death, sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, and heartbreak. I have bullied and been bullied, I have screamed and been screamed at. I have poised words fashioned into knives to fly straight at the heart of other people and I have been struck by the same sort of words. I know. I know those voices, I know those demons. I know that feeling of never being enough and being too much. I know the way the world seems to bend in further every day, crushing the life from your very bones. I’ve felt it, I’ve seen it, I’ve heard it. I know.
But some time in my recent past, I found my someday. I was sitting peacefully in my room, looking at the art on my walls and suddenly it hit me- I’m okay. I can breathe. My mind isn’t a battlefield where I fight tooth and nail to convince myself that I should live. I still get sad. I still get angry. I still know anxiety and see it from time to time. But breathing is natural. Letting go was life-giving, and skipping breakfast doesn’t mean the same thing that it once did. I have found a freedom that comes with the beauty of loving yourself and I want you to know, my soul cries for you to know, you are going to be okay.
Stick with it, beloved. Hang on one more day and then tomorrow, do it again. Think of all the dogs you haven’t pet, all the cats you haven’t heard purr, all the leaves that still get to change colors and glide down from trees. Think of the food you haven’t tried, the books you haven’t read, the people you haven’t met, the artist you haven’t seen in concert. Remember that you haven’t seen the world yet or that you haven’t found the perfect piece of pizza yet. Remember your dreams and aspirations and hold on tighter. Because I swear to you, it gets better. And someday, breathing will be natural again.
“I testify that bad days come to an end, that faith always triumphs, and that heavenly promises are always kept.” – Jeffery R. Holland