Life Is An Earthquake

     Sometimes in life we feel empty. Things get messy and confusing. Life hurts; mostly it hurts because it changes. Things shift and you have no control over it. It's in the little things like who sits next to who at Christmas dinners. You notice it when suddenly conversations become about what's in theaters instead of your dreams and naming stars. Growing up is one big tectonic plate shifting and shaking your world and just when you think things are going back to normal, you think things are slowing down, everything comes to a screeching halt. What no one tells you about sudden stops is that there's still momentum that crashes everything that's left into the ground. It hurts and it's painful.

     You pick yourself up off of the ground and brush the dust off. Scrambling around trying to gather everything you hold dear. It looks different for everyone; gluing the pieces together that is. Sometimes it's sharing with someone you don't even know. It's sacrifice and giving of yourself. It's letting old dreams die and trying desperately to find a new one. It's fighting with everything you have. It's climbing until you fall down exhausted and then forcing yourself to go one step more. 

     More often than we'd like to admit there is no putting it back together. It's changed and it will never be the same again. We get angry and lash out. We feel abandoned. We become depressed. We curl up inside of ourselves and mourn all that we've lost. We scream, kick, cry, and hit. We try to make sense of everything. We close our tear filled eyes and pray that when we wake up we realize that it will all just be a bad dream. It's not. This is life. It changes us and knocks us flat and it sucks. It hurts and sometimes it leaves us feeling empty and defeated and confused. We want to give up. Stop trying. Just lay down and never give up. That's just how it is.

     I get it, I understand. Here's what I have to say it sucks. It will and you don't have to pretend like everything is okay. Kick, scream, and cry if that's what you need to do. It's okay to be upset. What's not okay is to give up on yourself. Never...ever give up on yourself. You can keep going. You can and you will.