The Pursuit of Happiness

There is so much pain in the world.

People tell you to be genuine and then dismiss you when you are.

People tell you to help others while they’re too wrapped up in themselves and their depression to help other people.

Everyone is hurting.

But instead of helping or being vulnerable, we flee to preserve our dignity.

Sticks and stones will break my bones and words will always hurt me.

The bones will heal.

The words will stay in my mind. Tormenting me through the night, swirling around and around beating against my skull like a drum.

Tunneling down through my throat and burrowing within my very soul. They stay trapped inside me, there’s nowhere else for them to go.

They don’t mend and heal like bones.

They boil and fester, tearing away at my very core until I’m raw.

Screaming at me when I’m at my lowest point.

Telling me I’ll never be enough.

I’ll never be enough?

You’ll never be enough?

We all have a darkness inside that whispers to us in the night.

It makes us doubt.

Doubt who we are. Doubt who others are. Doubt the very ground beneath our feet.

We constantly fight to keep that darkness contained. Because if it ever fully escaped, we would lose ourselves within it.

Engulfed in a never-ending storm of torment, doubt, failures, sorrows. A perfect prison designed and contained within our own minds.

A prison from which there is no escape.

They say to stay strong and keep your head high. But instead, we hang our heads and dwell on our lows.

Who decided our vulnerability was such a terrible weakness?

Everyone is hurt.

No one knows how to heal.

But we cling to one another and constantly search for something real.

A kindred soul is like a life raft in the middle of a raging ocean. We grab onto it and hold on as though our lives depend on it.

But what we don’t know is that life raft was searching for a boat to save itself.

It was drowning too. Trying to make its way through the raging sea.

But because it looked safe, looked put together, it became a beacon of hope for the one who was drowning as well.

We’re all drowning within this sea. Some of us just appear to be doing better than others.

We cannot save ourselves if we never accept who we are inside.

We set our boundaries to protect who we are inside because our inner selves are our purest forms. They need to be protected.

But those who do not know their inner selves seek to possess others, so they tear down the boundaries and push them aside as though they’re nothing.

They seek to gain that purity, for if they can possess someone’s inner self then maybe, just maybe, they can possess their own.

Our exterior selves are a mask. It’s what we present to the world, it may be a version of ourselves but our truest forms are what we hide underneath that visible mask.

We have to accept our inner beings and help others accept theirs as well. Because if we constantly hide our inner selves then eventually they’ll fade away until we no longer recognize ourselves in the mirror.

We need to validate and praise our flaws and vulnerabilities rather than cast them aside and chastise those who are brave enough to show them.

We need to lift each other up instead of stepping on the backs of those who have already fallen.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Reach out to those who are down, follow the path in pursuit of happiness.