Life is.. Well, Life..

Honestly, I have gone through a period in my life where all I could think was "Why me?". Everything always seemed to be going wrong. People would leave me, or let me down. I was always letting myself down. Goals seemed so far out of reach. I gave up on dreams. Anxiety was always filling my thoughts and actions, completely overwhelming me. No words were ever inspiring. Things I had once enjoyed seemed mundane. I felt like I was being slapped in the face over and over again. I never wanted to get out of bed. 

That light at the end of the tunnel.. Yeah well.. That didn't exist for me. 

People would tell me things like "turn to God" or "you just need to get up and try. Time heals and It'll get better."... Well little did they know that it just isn't that easy once you've gone down the road I was going down. You can't just flip a switch and be fine. Those answers that people give like "pray about it" gave me nothing. 

I was spiraling out of control...

Basically since my childhood I have felt like I needed to grow up extremely fast, and so that's what I did. Things were never easy at home. And once I hit fifth grade, school stopped having any kind of appeal as well. I was pretty much always that awkward girl that everyone made fun of. And even when I was just a pre-teen I felt like I really needed to carry a lot of my families issues on my shoulders. Then when it came time to date all I did was get myself into abusive relationship after abusive relationship.. If it wasn't physically abusive, it was emotionally. I just didn't know what I was doing.. I had never been taught what love was supposed to look like, or how to have enough self respect to know that I deserved far better. But hey.. I was always taught that hiding your emotions, and burying things so that no one could see was always the way to fix my problems. 

I was really okay for the most part. Or at least so I thought until I was finally out of High School and forced to really look at life and think about it. I had too much time to just be in my head with my relentless thoughts, along with the never ending darkness that hovered above my home and my family.

The small light I had was being completely doused.. But I kept pushing forward. Determined to be okay or at least seem like I was okay. I continued to carry so much on my shoulders. I continued to do everything in my power to protect my little sister from the same torment I was feeling every day. I continued to tell everyone I was fine... I continued to lie to myself.

I was caught in a relentless storm. And that is when the darkness really hit.

My story, my background, has never been very pretty. Basically no one knows about everything, except of course, for those who were there. But I was never completely aware of how much I was enduring, how much I was allowing myself to endure, even when I probably didn't need to.

Trust me when I say that I have been down the darkest road a person can go down. At least mentally and emotionally..

But now.. I can safely and completely truthfully say that I am not longer there.

I learned that well... Life.. Life is just life. 

The universe is never out to get you. People may do harmful things to you, but really, everything after that one specific moment of harm, the place any remaining pain is coming from is yourself. You may have a bad day, but one day does not make a bad life...

Basically all hurt and pain we experience really comes from ourselves.. Our mind sets. It comes from nothing else, and no one else. 

Even when someone does something to hurt you, you DO NOT have to take it to heart. You do not have to have an issue with anything that anyone else does or says. It is not your problem, whether it is directed at you or not. You cannot control anyone else, you can only control you.. So focus on that.

Forgiveness really is the best weapon. The last thing a person trying to hurt you wants to see, is a genuine smile plastered on your face. If someone is aiming to hurt you, do not give them the satisfaction. 

You cannot blame anyone else for your problems. Because the only one holding onto it is you. If your parent didn't teach you how to add 2 and 2, you cannot blame them for you not knowing the answer. That is not their problem. The only reason the problem still exists is because you didn't do anything to fix the issue. 

In the end, everyone is dealing with their own problems. Everyone is experiencing hurt and pain of every kind, everyday. And those people who hold onto the past are the ones that are often hurting the most.

Whenever a storm is raging around you, remember that you never have to internalize it. A storm can be raging, and you can stand in the middle of it without it ever touching you. She's yelling? Cool. That's her issue. He dumped you? Cool. That's his problem because another man is going to find you and treat you better than he ever did.

Life is life guys.. It's never perfect. It's messy. Trust me.. I have learned these things the hard way. Once you learn to just accept.. It becomes so much easier. 

And always remember.. The past is the past. Every second that ticks by is already the past. In fact this is in the past already..

So let go. And breathe.

Perceptions

Really, there is no right and there is no wrong. Not when you really look at things. There are only perceptions and opinions of each perception.

Think about it, and think about it critically. Here's an example: Imagine there is a doctor out there some where, at some hospital, and he has been working with a patient that has some form of cancer. Finally he is able to cure the patient and kill the cancer that has been living inside them. I think most everyone would say that the doctor was a hero, and that he did a good thing by killing the cancer. We as a society can agree that cancer is a bad thing that none of us want to face. So that was a good thing that he killed it right? Well you could just as easily say that the doctor was bad and wrong, because he killed the cancer. Though we may look at cancer as a bad thing, really it is just a living thing, trying to survive. So it was still a murder of a living thing. 

I am not in any way trying to justify cancer, or say it isn't as bad as we make it out to be. I agree with the large population when they say that that cancer is a thing that should not exist. I am just trying to make you think critically.. I am just trying to say that everything is all about perception, and point of view. So stay with me here. 

Here is another example of sorts: Cancer really is just good cells gone bad. Or some would say too many good cells trying to grow and multiply too much to the point where they become bad, because really, when you look at it, too much of any good thing can always be bad. But there are also other cells in our bodies that grow quickly too, such as hair. In cancer treatments a person will lose their hair, along with the unwanted cancer cells. So does that make hair a bad thing too? Most people would say no, in fact I think all people would say no. Just like everyone would say cancer is bad. But the hair cells are being killed too, because really when it comes down to it cancer, and hair are both the same thing. Quickly growing cells. 

Point of view my friends. It's all in the point of view.

That's why there is no right or wrong. No good or bad. Just perceptions, and this invisible code of those things that we as the human species have made.

A completely different example could be terrorists. Once again, I think we can all agree they are bad, and doing horrible and destructive things. But in their heads they are not, all they are doing is serving their country, and often times their religion. They are doing something good, according to themselves and their culture. It's the same thing with anyone that participates in say, a shooting at a school. It is always justified in the persons head. They view it as good in some way. You may not be able to understand it, but in the end that doesn't matter, because they do. In their heads, they are doing good.

You may say God does exist, and that you are right, and that believing in God and whatever else your specific religion teaches is the right thing to do. But someone else will always be there to say that you are wrong, for x amount of reasons, and like you are correct in your head, they will always be correct in their own head. 

There will always be perceptions, and an invisible line of right and wrong. Even though in the end there really is no such thing... It is all just something we have established over time to hopefully create some kind of order. We as human beings are just programmed that way, we can't help ourselves. We need a sense of community, and we need a sense of structure in order to stay sane.

And that is okay.. I am not saying there is anything wrong with it. Basically all I am trying to say is that maybe we just take it all a bit too far. We start thinking no one else is right, and that we are the only person with the answers. Our minds become closed, and we build prejudices and create hate. We form opinions that we start to try and teach as fact.. And in those things, that is where the problems lie.

Try to remember everything is just a perception the next time you are about to judge someone... And try to remember that just because you may disagree with something, that doesn't always make it wrong. The day that this world becomes more open minded may never happen, but if it does, that'll be the day that so many problems are fixed...

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

The Vast Universe

What is the universe? What is reality? What religion is true? What is fact and what is opinion? What is truth and what is a lie? The great questions of life... At least in my opinion..

And lets face it. Every single person on this planet would give you a totally different answer to each of those questions. One person would say the Roman Catholic church is the true religion, another would say Buddism is the true religion and so on and so forth.. But then someone else would come along to challenge both of those views, and after digging even deeper they would find that each person in both religions see even their own religion differently from others who belong to the same one... One person would say reality is simply just formed from everything that has a true existence on this Earth. But what truly exists? What one person may say exists, another would say it doesn't. What may seem to be a fact to another person, such as God does exist, is a complete opinion to another. What one person may consider a truth, will always have falsehoods to another... One may say the universe contains all of the stars, and planets, and moons, and galaxies.. But then another person would come along and tell them that we have only reached 5% of the universe, so how do we really know what all of  it contains?

Then we would spiral around again to all of the other questions, because they are truly linked.. If we only know of 5% of the universe, how could we know that the God of one religion is the true one? Because 5% is truly so small, and we have no clue what other life could be out there worshiping a completely different God in the unknown universe. So then is what we know of the universe truly conclusive fact, or is it just opinion based off of what little we do know... And on and on it goes. Spiraling out of control.

But truly all of this could have such a simple answer if we are willing enough to see it like that. What is the universe? Well.. The universe is in our own minds. There is absolutely nothing, no picture, no teaching, no opinion, no fact, no story, that doesn't get processed by our minds and spirits. So of course the universe is all in our minds. It is unique to every individual. Because our realities are truly our own, because we create them. Everyone will always give a different answer to every question. Not one of us is programmed the same. Your universe is your own. Don't let anyone take that from you.

Dare to be different. Because in the end we are all connected. We each have a little piece of God in us. We all have a different purpose, we all have a unique story, we all have unique thoughts, we are all meant to teach something and learn something. Everything is so huge that not one of us could possibly have all the answers, and we aren't meant to. That is why life is only part of the journey, and a truly short part at that. We will all continue to grow, and put pieces together. Because that is all we have, we only have pieces.. And each of us is trying to put together this never ending, incomplete, puzzle in a different way.

So worship how you may. Teach how you will. Love how you want. But don't forget that you will never be completely correct with anything to anyone but yourself. Everything has a piece of truth to it, and a piece of a lie to it all at the same time.

What one person may say is true, could be completely true to them, but it does not have to be true to you. Truths are circumstantial, just like every fact, and every opinion. 

This is your universe. Make of it what you will.