MESSAGE FROM Anonymous

any advice for someone who is trying to reach better days

gabriellabowden REPLIED

The days get sweeter and the nights become less lonely. You find you love things, and you can do them, and you practice them and it’s beautiful. And in the art of losing yourself in these pursuits, you will find chunks of your authentic self, parts that have been waiting for years. You will hurt yourself in the process of getting to know life, and other people, but you’ll get there. It’s not so much waking up one morning to find that the world is beautiful, it is slow but it can start with noticing the early morning cold, or picking up a pencil, or spending an hour in a car with an open sun roof, letting the rain hit your face. And it’s a quiet dawning, a slow exhaling, lasting months and years, as you understand that this is not as much about you as you thought. one day this won’t hurt anymore. And things will still frighten you and make you sad, there is no such thing as a life without bitterness or human error. But the things that sting you now, do so less and less. I can promise you that you won’t be stumbling from place to place always, at a certain age you start to get realisations about who you are and what life has to offer. And these epiphanies, unlike the ones you had when you were sixteen, they stick around. Suddenly you’re able to say no, you’re able to differentiate from what you need and what you thought you wanted. You will be amazed one day that you thought you wanted to die, because at times life will be so good and full, it almost hurts. All of the lonely days and the hours wasted and the self absorption, the crass touching and the false apologies and the time spent wondering whether you were even human at all, it adds up to something, and it pales in the face of all the beauty and terror that life has to offer. Please wait. Please stay a while longer. I thought I understood so much, and now I know that I know nothing at all. But for the first time ever, I’m excited to find out and I want U to share in that