ON SECOND THOUGHT – A Rainbow Exchanged My Fears With Hope
Sometimes, you have to look outside the cracks of the life you’re living and remember that pain is only temporary.
I’ve been thinking about how easy it is, how easy it is to get swept up in agony. Once you fall in its depth and find stability in it, it becomes so easy to forget you have to climb out. The feeling of being lost and confused turns into one you know all too well; its grip is tight – tighter than you could ever imagine.
You wake up beside your state of confusion and despair and go to sleep holding it with your claws suffocating it.
Funny, you swore you’d let it go, didn’t you?
You told yourself you’d make a great big plan that would change your life for the better: maybe get back on a healthy routine, head to the gym more often, take a chance and take aim at your dreams. But then you’re back to square one, back to doing the things you swore were yesterday’s business, back to hugging the darkness that is now comfortable – a well-known enemy.
This year I’ve been learning all about how difficult it is to climb out of one’s state of despair and how hard it is to take your life back when it has slipped out from the palm of your hands. It became harder and harder for me to appreciate the little things that I still had and all I could see were the mountains that stood before me. The petty things became the biggest things, the bigger things became insurmountable.
I used to be overly optimistic when I was growing up. The glass was always half full for me, and I was certainly more prone to positivity. Essentially, I was the look-on-the-bright-side kind of girl, but one day she suddenly vanished. I’m not sure when, maybe when I started seeing life only for what it really was rather than what it could be, I began to see the glass drain more and more as time went on. Maybe, it was when I discovered some scars hurt even after they heal that I began to shield my heart from the risky nature of optimism.
I saw a glimpse of that girl with an overly rosy outlook this week.
It began the moment I saw a rainbow the week before – yup, when I was going through the motions. Laying in my bed, watching something that had no relevance to make it memorable, I turned to my window and there it was. I had to do a double-take to make sure there wasn’t something in my eyes or that my imagination hadn’t become wildly vivid. But there it was; after the rain came a rainbow.
A reminder that while there is always a calm before the storm, there is always a calm after the storm, or in some cases a rainbow. Sometimes, you have to look outside the cracks of the life you’re living and remember that pain is only temporary. Perhaps, it wasn’t that big a deal, but it brought me some kind of inner peace.
The second thing that brought me some joy this week is the book I dusted off the shelf and began reading. I’ll definitely post a review of it once I’m done with the last few pages, but in The Little Big Things, Henry Fraser’s outlook on life has been helping me get back into a positive headspace.
Last week, I said that it’s okay to allow yourself to go through the motions and feel every single emotion. I still believe that wholeheartedly, but what happens afterwards? Do you sit still cuddling with your demons or do you take a second look searching for the beauty that could be outside your window?
I chose the latter. And you?
Your restless romantic roamer
What about you? What things are keeping you positive?
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I absolutely love this dive into despair and what it means about our perspective in life. The line “Once you fall in its depth and find stability in it” really resonates with me because that’s exactly how I find myself functioning–comfortable with despair because it’s been there for so long. I also have a hard time seeing the bright side of things, but I’ve found that gratefulness even for the smallest of pleasures has really helped work that emotional muscle.
Totally agree with you that finding gratefulness in the tiniest things has brought me happiness lately too. The important thing is to know how to step out of the comfortable despair and attempt to make things better. It might bring us discomfort but we ought to try regardless.
Thank you for reading!