Ups, Downs and All Arounds

I promise you that regardless of how dark everything seems right now, how overwhelming and completely unsolvable your problems and stresses feel - you will eventually get through them. May take days, may take weeks or like me for some of them - years. But you will get there. You will always get there and you will
 be a better and stronger person for it.
~J.V. Manning

Life is like riding a roller coaster - blindfolded.

You feel it moving, speeding up and slowing down, you feel it climbing at times - working hard and feel it suddenly plummet as it makes a crest over some huge hill and you are suddenly sailing through the air.  You can't see what twists and turns are coming or prepare for the sudden depths that your car plunges, only to even out when you least expect it. The only options you have are to hang on or throw your hands up to the sky and roll with it. You can't fight it. You can't jump off and you can't pause the smooth sections as hard as you may try. You may wish you could stand on the platform for awhile, catch your breath and just watch as the empty car travels along without you - but you can't. Life does not come with a pause button.

On the roller coaster we call life; there is only one direction you can go. Forward. There is no chance of reversing; no going back and side to side is never an option. Where you came from doesn't matter nearly as much as where you are going. But, like life, your view of what is in front of you will not become clear until you get there. You can prepare yourself as best you can, as long as you are looking forward. But if you are constantly looking back to where you came from - you just might miss what is in front of you when it comes

You can never go back. Sometimes I think this is one of the hardest lessons that people learn. You can never go back. You cannot undo certain things and while most are tempted to hold on as tightly as possible - once something has ended, you have to move on. Otherwise you are left clinging to memories and to ghosts that are shadows of a part of your life that is over.  You have to keep going forward - regardless of how scary the thought of it can be. 

Life is fluid. 

Someone once said to me during a particularly difficult period in my life the words - everything will work out. I remember looking at them and sighing. A sigh loaded with defeat and sadness. I asked them when. When would everything be ok? When would life magically work out? How in the hell could it possibly ever be anything but a struggle? I was dealing with so many different things at the same time, for so long - I was overwhelmed and exhausted. I look at them and angrily told them not to give me platitudes. I didn't need any flowery phrases or inspirational gobbly gook. What I need was a break.

Sitting here now years later I realized something. Everything does eventually work out. Maybe not in the way you wanted. Maybe not in the way you envisioned it. But it does. As I sit here looking back over a number of moments in my life that at the time I could never see my way through to the other side of, I realize that each and every one of them are over. Some I would love different endings and some I wish I could do over differently - but they are over and I am still standing. Weary maybe. Slightly jaded and possibly a little more neurotic then I was - but still standing. 

So it is with whatever you are facing in your life right now. I know that it feels like your problems and circumstances will never change. That things will never get better or you will never find your happy again. That the "everything will work out" phrase is nothing more than inspirational bullshit and maybe it is. Maybe life doesn't actually ever work out. Maybe it just acclimates and readjusts to our changing circumstances. But I promise you that regardless of how dark everything seems right now, how overwhelming and completely unsolvable your problems and stresses feel - you will eventually get through them. May take days, may take weeks or like me for some of them - years. But you will get there. You will always get there and you will be a better, stronger person for it. You will know, without any shadow of a doubt, that you can handle anything and everything life throws at you.

You will see eventually that all the crap you have gone through, are going through or will be going through - will try you, it will test you and it will do everything it can to break you. But if you trust that eventually it will work out - somehow and that you will get to the other side, none of it will break you. Like being on a roller coaster - you take what comes your way. Throw your hands up and scream when you need to, or cover your eyes and hold on tight - but keep looking forward, because that next sudden twist could lead you into something amazing that you never thought possible. That next turn could be your turn. Your turn for happy. Your turn for success. Your turn to make everything ok in your world.

As Robert Frost once said,
 "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life- It goes on." 

As will you. You are strong enough to see yourself through whatever it is you are facing. You are strong enough to fight to get to where you need to be. You are strong enough to see the other side of life. Never doubt that for a minute. Trust that eventually everything will work out. Promise.

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