You Are More Than Your Hard Days

I’m reading this book right now that’s taking me to church every time I open it. I’m being asked to look (and I mean really look) at my life and how I grew up. I’m being challenged to relive bad days and respond to them differently than I did when I was a kid. Instead of avoidance as a way of survival, it’s like this book is screaming to me — “you can survive actually feeling now, don’t avoid it.”

I keep wanting to scream back, “Are you sure?” A world where surviving and feeling go hand-in-hand is foreign to me. The idea of feeling the range of feelings that both hard and good days bring to my door is more than I’ve ever asked myself to do. I was so scared to pick up this book because I wasn’t even sure I could survive reading it.

What if I couldn’t get to the next page?

What if I couldn’t do what it asked of me?

What if I read it and it still didn’t change anything?

After losing my mom I got used to leaning on my logic to guide me through life. If I could rationalize then I could survive. It limited me into believing that my role in this world was only latched onto what I was capable of yesterday. This book has been pushing me to realize that I have no idea what I’m capable of unless I give myself the chance to prove I am more than my hard days.

You’ve probably been there too. The day has been long, the domino effect of facts and pain and moments you just wish had not crossed you are right there staring you at the face. The road breaks into two forks. You can choose to take the fork on the left — the one that asks you to sleep it off because the next day will be new and empty of all the pain or hard — or you can choose the fork to the right. That path asks you to simply plop down and get comfortable feeling uncomfortable.

I’ve built a life choosing the left fork for all the moments I just didn’t, or couldn’t, navigate alone while I was growing up. It was survival to choose what was going to help me survive. I don’t blame anyone (no matter their age) who right now is in the midst of the most life-hindering shittiness and chooses to just sleep and wake up the next morning like it’s all gone away. I’ve been there, still am there some days.

It’s a privilege to be able to choose the right fork in this moment in time. It’s an odd privilege to choose to just sit in the middle of all the shit you’re used to running away from. I choose to sit not because I’m a masochist or because I think I’m indestructible but simply because I’ve been down the other road too many freaking times and suddenly I have a choice not to.

The open wounds don’t have to scar over at snail’s pace anymore. I can actively participate to help the process move along. But first here’s what I had to start trusting — that I am more than my hard days, my trauma, the moments in my life that happened around me, to me, and that I didn’t choose.

My worth isn’t tied to how I chose to cope then or how I need to cope now. My worth is tied to how much I can love myself no matter the day or the pain. My worth is tied intricately and deeply to my acceptance that loving myself is not made up of just one definition or how I fulfill a single need.

I woke up this morning deeply aware of every single pound I had gained during quarantine. I changed outfits four times just trying to find something that made me feel good in my body. We do this with our mind too and we’re allowed to. We can put on, take off, rework the paths we want to take or the ways we choose to heal. The one constant is the body and the mind we’re choosing to adorn or complement.

We’re stuck with those and how we choose to love the way they curved to help us better adapt — that’s the foundation for believing that you are more than your hard days.