Have you ever been swimming on a hot day at the lake? You step into the cool water, wading further in, immersing yourself deeper with every wave. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and dunk your head under. When you emerge with your eyes still closed, the heat from the sun beams onto your face emulating joy in a way you’ve never even imagined before. This is the physical manifestation of happiness, of that I’m sure.

You change.

You grow.

You heal.

You learn.

You move forward.

But something pulls you back…

The grief of who you used to be… the ease of the known, even when it doesn’t serve you.

Is it maybe that this is who you truly are at your core? Maybe you can’t shake those behaviors because, deep down, they make you…. You. But what if you don’t want to be you?

Can a person ever truly change?

Can a person ever truly grow?

Can a person ever truly heal?

Can a person ever truly learn?

Can a person ever truly move forward?

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Celebrations galore! Smiles abound! Congratulations roaring through the crowd! Spotlight.

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

My heart beats for yours. So I celebrate, I smile, I clap with the crowd. Darkness.

Everything

Everything

Everything

My soul recognizes your soul, but you are a stranger to me. Your familiarity draws me in and eases my worries. Maybe I knew you in another lifetime. Maybe I knew you in another timeline. Maybe our paths crossed in ways we weren’t able to understand before now, and you’re not really a stranger at all.

Can a heart be tied without any string?

Passion and intensity tend to be frowned upon, so how do the passionate and intense live and thrive?

Hide it, mask it, tone it down. Don’t talk about it, don’t think about it. A head full of everything that hasn’t been said, everything you try not to even think. Yearning to be described as “quiet” and “agreeable” in hopes that will equate to “lovable,” “valued,” “wanted.”

But to hide is to remain unseen, unheard. So while in your head that’s slowly filling up, spilling over, and pouring out everything you’ve never said, you fruitlessly try to mop it all up thinking no one could possibly notice just how hard you are working to keep it all in…. and no one does. Not a soul sees the amount of effort it is taking you just to exist day in and day out. Meanwhile, you’re gasping for air, not sure when you might take that last breath before your brain fills up and drowns you out for good this time.

It might be time to find a lifejacket.

I live in the Land of What Ifs.

It’s not a particularly good neighborhood, but there’s a lot of opportunity here.

The What Ifs are sometimes light, other times dark.

They never go away, they are always present here.

The only thing you can do is embrace the Light What Ifs and push past the Dark What Ifs.

You can’t just get beyond the Dark What Ifs though, you have to go through them.

They demand to be seen, to be heard, felt, and respected.

They aren’t bad, they are just different.

Once you have felt the Dark What Ifs, you can move beyond them, towards the Light What Ifs, towards the potential.

If you refuse to acknowledge the dark, you will never have the light again.

Trapped in eternal darkness.

But that’s the best part of the Land of What Ifs.

What if you felt the dark, acknowledged it, and kept reminding yourself you’ve got to be here now to get there then (there are no shortcuts in the Land of What Ifs)

What if?

Tight chest, warm face.

Labored breathing.

It doesn’t feel like it is going to be okay this time.

A silent tennis match, quicker quicker.

How can time be slowed down? How can time be turned back? How can time….

Hypothetically, it can only get better from here.

Seeking out beauty in the pain, art in the memories, hope in the fading.

It stings.

Two cardinals frolicking among the barren trees on an early, quiet spring afternoon in the woods.

The smell of a bonfire as the sun sets on the first warm evening of the season.

The sounds of the neighborhood kids playing outside, with the windows wide open and the backdrop of a sky soaked in deep, dark orange as the day becomes night.

The way the wood on my favorite picture frame will fool anyone into believing it’s not broken, leaning into each broken piece perfectly (if you only don’t disturb it.)

Spending the day cleaning your home and then taking a hot shower, moisturizing your skin, and being swallowed up into your favorite oversized sweats before sinking into the couch with your favorite blanket.

Reading a kind and empathetic exchange on social media.

Receiving a compliment on something you’ve worked really hard on.

Hot coffee in your favorite mug, done up just the way you like it, right when you’re getting out of bed.

Sun on your face as a gusty breeze cools your skin.

Writing the perfect lines, and rereading them over and over and over again.

So, when I was much younger, I would often find myself trying to explain a very specific feeling to my friends… hoping someone might know the feeling and therefore understand. There was this thing I’d do. I’d start considering the universe…. The universes. The idea that the world is soooo much bigger than me. It would make me physically dizzy and mentally dizzy too. It felt like this sudden, big, huge, HEAVY realization… but happened every time I thought of the “what else is out there?”

As an adult, I find myself in a similar thought pattern, and the pattern is now holding. Every now and then, I start to get worried about losing my mind. I think “wow, seems like it could just happen at any moment.” I wonder if I just suddenly stopped actively keeping my mind together, would I lose it? Would I know I was losing it? Would it be like being trapped in a mind that wasn’t really yours? The mind seems so…. Fickle. Like it could give out at any time and no one would even bat an eye about it. These thoughts put me into that same feeling, that heavy realization… physically and mentally.

What if I’ve already gone crazy and this is just what it’s like in the part of this brain I exist in?