the girl, her friends & her journey

Most of us know a lot of people, but the truth is that we don’t really know those people and quite a few people really know us. But you know those close inner circle friends who really do know you…the person behind the smiles, the hurt, the walls and all the pain. They know the unrefined raw material that you were, before the re-branding…Those friends, they are the real MVP.

I recently reconnected with a long lost friend, one of my very own MVPs. He reminded me of the little girl I was, the baby that desperately needed to grow up. Talking to him again made me remember where I started. It made me proud of this amazing person I have become. Reconnecting with him made me appreciate my journey, how far I’ve come and how well I’ve done.

You know how they say some people are not meant to stay in your life forever? Well, I think some people are meant to leave for a while and then come back to remind you that you are not the same person you used to be…and that’s okay because no one is meant to stay the same way forever.

Why I believe in fairy tales and why you should

I recently started following a TV show – Once Upon a Time. This show is a combination of lots of fairy tales that most of us know and love as kids. You know the thing about fairy tales is that they almost always end well, heroes get happy endings and well, we all know how villains end up. In Once Upon a time, I learnt that nothing is set in stone and even if they are, stones can be crushed.

I have been going through a rough patch in the last couple of months. I would wake up each day too scared to get out of bed, not motivated to do anything. It was like my tear glands grew a mind of their own and conspired against me. Everything made me cry.

And that was when I stumbled on this show. In a bid to occupy my idle time with something other than crying and work, I stuck with it and I’m glad I did. For one, I discovered stories I had never even known existed. Stories of love, love lost and found, kindness, joy, strengths and weaknesses, family, forgiveness and most importantly stories of hope.

My point is this, yes, life isn’t fair, no one said it would be. We all go through rough and tough times. The thing is as unbelievable as it may sound, things always get better and when they do, it is almost always like the rough patch didn’t even happen at all.

Fairy tales are a reminder that our lives will get better if we just hold on to hope. Your happy ending may not necessarily be what you hoped for or expected, and that is what will make it so special. Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a powerful thing and it’s something we all could most definitely use.

I love the movies; don’t we all?

I am a book person. I figured that out a long time ago. There are times when I would give up almost anything in the world to read a book, and like most people, I love happy endings. I love fairy tales, Cinderella stories and ish. I have however realized that i find movies almost as equally comforting.

I love that actors do not die, I love that lovers end up together or eventually find someone better. I love that people get justice. But no matter how many people get happy endings in movies, I hate to admit that it is not real.

In real life, people die, loving someone does not necessarily mean they will feel the same way about you or that you will end up together. In real life, there are no guarantees, nothing is ever so simple and nobody knows where they’ll end up.

Real life teaches us to take leaps of faith, enjoy the now, and try to be better people everyday and that’s the whole point of living.

To friends, old and new

How often do you think about how and why your friends came into your life? My answer? Quite often. Was it random or by design or maybe a bit of both? I once asked a good friend of mine how we met, funny thing is neither of us could remember. Weird, right? I know.

Regardless of the reason, some friends you just know are gonna be by your side for a while. Others? You are not so sure…There are those people you thought would make good friends but they end up being, well…not so good friends. Nevertheless, you miss them when they leave, but the truth is that missing them is a tiny little price to pay for your sanity. Maybe it’s because they are too toxic to be around, maybe they’re the perfect sly definition. Whatever the reason, some friendships are just too expensive, the cost far outweigh the benefits. I’ve had a few of those, made a few tough calls, I have to admit, losing friends doesn’t get any easier…

Not everyone in your life is meant to stay. People leave not necessarily because they’re not so good, sometimes because they’ve done their parts and it’s time to move on. There are those too.

For those who are meant to stay and do, those are the people you never wanna let go of. They don’t give up on you when you think they should, they are never absent even if they aren’t present, they stick with you for a long time…this is for them.

 

 

What I Learned from Pushing Myself

By the time I got back from work last Friday, I was exhausted. Work, traffic and all, in short it was like the weight of the whole world was on my shoulders. I didn’t only feel it, I looked it.

Fast forward to about 15minutes after i got home, I realized there was a million things that I needed to do if I would make it to my friend’s introduction ceremony the next day. So, ignoring how tired I was, I got to work. I washed clothes, cleaned the  house, rearranged my wardrobe, did the dishes and some other things.

I was tired. But I had a goal which was this; not only did I need to be somewhere extremely important the next day, I needed those things to be done before leaving my house the next day.

I had three options:

• Go to bed and wake up very early the next morning which was not going to happen(the waking up early part anyway).
• Do it immediately and wake up late the next day(the first part didn’t sound so good either).
• Leave it undone(this would have been the best considering I was feeling justifiably lazy).

I chose to go with the 2nd option, not because I wanted to or had enough energy to, but because I had a goal.

Most times we get too tired to take the next step. We feel like we’ll fall over if we don’t stop and get some rest. On Friday, I realized that when this happens all we need to go on is to never lose sight of why we started in the first place. This is the first thing I learned from  myself this year.

Pushing myself beyond what I thought was my limit helped me understand how important having a goal actually is.

By the way, the introduction ceremony was interesting…I got to see my friend again after about 3 years and it was totally worth the effort.

Holiday Cheers and Much More

I’ve decided to stop thinking

When we stay stuck in the past, we stay hurt, we stay victims. Being in a relationship is a risk. It’s accepting that there are no guarantees, accepting that no one knows  what the future brings and going for it anyway.

I have always felt a need to put everything in order. The thought that everything has to make sense, that everything has to follow a particular order. I have realized that trying to make sense of every experience sucks all the happiness out of life.

When someone comes into my life, I think about it so much so that I destroy almost every chance of happiness. This isn’t saying that thinking is bad, but I have come to realize that out of every situation comes opportunities for happiness. Overthinking destroys our capability to find happiness around us. It places our focus on the things that may go wrong, we rationalize overthinking by saying we need to be prepared. When we overthink, the things we think might go wrong eventually goes wrong because there is a very thin line between thinking and doing. We have thought so much about it that we start acting out the script we have created in our minds.

I just want to be happy without feeling the need to rationalize. Who cares why I am happy as long as I am. What’s the fun in knowing from the start what the end will look like? Living each day as it comes, one step at a time, the surprises and the suspense, believing that everything will work out fine and even if it doesn’t, I will move on without as much as a twinge of guilt or regret. That is my definition of happiness.

For when you feel like a toy

People have a definition of who you should be and what you should be like. Walk like this, talk like that, dress that way, marry this person, appeal to a certain societal standard. The list goes on and on.

When you don’t appeal to them as much, they find something new, something more malleable and they move on to the next play thing- because that is all you are to them. They forget about you, leaving you with all the modifications they have made.

But that is not the worst thing. the worst thing is that you would have forgotten about yourself too. You would have lost your sense of self and identity.

As much as possible, remain the best authentic version of yourself.

All these questions

 

You know that raging war inside you. That fight you have with yourself every time you have to choose between what you want and what is available, the nagging questions that never go away, the seemingly permanent feeling of dread when you eventually choose an option.

“Should I wait?” “Will it come?” “What if it doesn’t?” “What if it does?” “Should I go on?” All those questions that never seem to be adequately answered.

What do you do when you get to Choiceville; that place where you can’t go on without making a choice? Do you settle or do you wait?