Just a day that starts like any other. Excitement for plans to come, chatter to quell the excitement. There’s a happiness in the air that can only exist in the innocence of the unknown.

Just like that, the floor is pulled from under your feet. Gasping for air, you’ve been sucker punched in the stomach when you weren’t looking.

How can you catch your breath now? Reaching out for those closest to you… begging them to take hold of you, not to let you fall.

The landing is rough, harsh, and cold.

To your utter disbelief, there’s no one else in sight. Your deep sense of love and trust has betrayed you. You are pained and blindsided.

Little by little, you pick up the pieces. What you do from here is what’s most important anyhow. So you grow, you learn, you change, you move forward.

Then the deafening silence sets in again, you weren’t ready for this to happen. Your transformation is actually a transmutation. You just aren’t who you were that day anymore, and you didn’t choose this shift, even if it is for the better.

It is invalidating that the choice was taken from you. It is not something that can just be coherently talked away with logic. It wasn’t fair and it never will be.

The good in you today came from that unfair, unjust, unexpected pain and loneliness. The trust and belief you had were not misguided, just misplaced.

You weren’t ready then, but you are ready now.