Brave Enough

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

To love and be loved.
That is the meaning of life.

I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. That nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control

No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it.

The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it.

NOBODY will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends can help you along the way, but the healing – the genuine healing, the actual real-deal, down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change – is entirely and absolutely up to you.

It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that
my mother had been taken from me. I couldn’t
even hate her properly. I didn’t get to grow up
and pull away from her and bitch about her with
my friends and confront her about the things
I wished she’d done differently and then get
older and understand that she did the best she
could and realize that what she did was pretty
damn good and take her fully back into my arms
again. Her death had obliterated that. It had
obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very
height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced
me to instantly grow up and forgive her every
motherly fault at the same time that it kept me
forever a child, my life both ended and begun in
that premature place where we’d left off.
She was my mother, but I was motherless.
I was trapped by her but utterly alone.
She would always be the empty bowl that
no one could fill. I’d have to fill it myself
again and again and again.

You are grieving because you loved truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of death. Allowing this into your consciousness will not keep you from your suffering, but it will help you survive the next day.

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light,”

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light,”