The Silver Lining

Growing up, until the age of eight years old my life was so, so unbelievably normal. I can't tell you the things I would do to get that life back, because I can't get it back. What I can do, though, is explain how things changed for me and how I've learned from them.

Two weeks before my eighth birthday, my father ended his life. It was the most traumatic thing I'd gone through, and still is to this day. My life shattered. It became some other eight-year-old girl's life. It was no longer my own. How could it be? How could my life be turned so upside down? The day I was told my father passed away, I didn't cry. I looked around the living room and saw my brother and sister crying with so much pain in their hearts, and my mother looking white. Pale. Imagine, having to tell your adolescent children they no longer have a father. Imagine, coming to the realization that you're now in this all alone. I remember standing on the ottoman in my living room, all the feelings draining from my body and I was just empty. I walked to my bedroom and closed the door, and after that, I don't remember anything from that day.

We moved away two years later, back to the city my father lived in. My mom thought it would be easier that way, moving some place familiar. After all, we had lived there for years before we moved to where we were living when he passed. I started school the day after we moved into our new house, still dealing with the absence of my father. See, I was never told the true reason he passed. I was told, "He was just sick, honey." And that was all. My mind was left to wander. Was is cancer? Was it a heart condition? Was it something I just missed? It was all so confusing to my young mind. Nowadays I know my mother was just trying to protect me, and him, from the truth. She didn't want to alter my perception of him. She didn't want me to think only of that, and not the person he truly was. But at the time, I was just angry. I never asked the questions, though. I knew in time my mother would come to me and give me all the answers I'd been waiting for. And she did, the summer before ninth grade.

It had been seven years, since he passed. Seven years of wonder, seven years of no clear answers, of not knowing why. I was 14 years old and more confused than ever when my mother sat me on the couch, with my siblings huddling close by. She told me, "I know you've probably been wondering what happened with dad, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to tell you. He had depression, Mouse, and that makes people really sad. So sad that they sometimes just can't handle it anymore. He took the pills in his bottle and went to bed, and he just didn't wake back up. I'm sorry, sweetheart," and she pulled me into a hug. I cried, that time. I sat with my mother and cried into her, until I was furious and got up and walked to bedroom and slammed the door. My mind was firing at rapid speed, thinking of all these pieces that finally fit together like a perfect puzzle. I understood. Finally, I understood.

I was a different person then than I was just a week before. My thoughts became more aggressive and jumbled and my friends weren't who I needed them to be, and for some reason the person looking back at me in the mirror no longer looked like me. I was a mess. I just wanted some sort of time machine that could take me back to 2006 and hold the hand of my father, look him in the eye and tell him that I loved him, and that I needed him, and that everything would be alright. Of course I couldn't have that, though. I'd just have to move forward.

So, I did. I moved forward and became this adult with this "knowledge" that anybody can just leave you at any moment. That, no matter how hard we try, we'll never know what will happen. This was hard for me to deal with for a really long time, and it was difficult for me to establish relationships with any real substance. Having strange relationships with 30-year-old men, and failed attempts at making them actually love me, I felt broken once again. I was 19 years old and had so much behind me, that I didn't think I'd ever reach the person I strived to be.

And finally, I could see the perfect pathway. All the roots and the thorns were wiped away in front of me, and I understood. It's all been inside me this whole time. Everything I've ever wanted, everything I've ever wished for, was within me the entire time.

The silver lining is that you are all that you need to be okay. You are all that you need to find peace; and that, yeah, sometimes things are going to suck. You are going to have times where you are laughing so hard your stomach feels like its going to explode, and you are holding your pee in with all your might. And you're going to have times where you are on your knees, begging whatever it is that you believe in to make it stop. To make all the pain go away or turn back time, or that you'll give just about anything to reverse what just happened to you. But you'll still have yourself.

Even when you're lost,

You'll have yourself.

You'll find yourself.

You, are an extraordinary being.

You, are the silver lining.