Recently someone said I was very deep, and it was something they weren’t used to in life and it struck me as odd. Why is it that we live in a world where so many people prefer the shallows to swimming, always afraid to leave shore? What’s so scary about an adventure? Even if that adventure is finding yourself and someone to share this beautiful, crazy thing called life with. I mean sure, it’s scary to open up but every time I do and get burned, it teaches me that I can live through it and that’s truly powerful.

I can. I have. And I will again. And not everyone will have the courage to show the world who they really are, but that’s okay. Those people are the same people that don’t have the courage to even be honest with themselves and there’s no value in that.

It takes the uncomfortable spaces to find the comfortable ones. It takes the uncomfortable conversations to get to comfortable silences. It takes the uncomfortable honesty of looking yourself in the mirror and being truly honest with yourself to get to where you become surrounded by a love that values you to every fiber of your being. And you know what, I’ve done the work on myself, and I keep doing the work on myself every day. I’m not trying or trying to do, as I’ve heard others say. That’s the coward’s way out to explain away the failures. But why would you want to explain away the failures instead of just learning from them? Embrace them as much as you sit with your demons and talk to your skeletons to find out why they are still there, find out what hold they have on you, examine those failures not for how others have wronged you, but for how you have wronged yourself and then look yourself in the mirror and come up with a plan to like what you see, and eventually love the person you are too.

Failures mean we tried. Failing when we know we’ve done our best – even when our best was struggling knowing we gave everything we had to give every day is what matters. It’s how you get through the hard days, how you learn to move forward past the rough ones, it’s even how, as I am learning myself, you learn to give yourself grace for not being perfect and thank yourself for doing your best, even today. That’s something truly beautiful.

There is no “finding happiness.” Life doesn’t work that way. You create it. You choose it in the choices you make. The big ones and the small ones. The way you treat others, the way you treat yourself especially when you are alone. It’s the confidence you find not in how you look or how much money you make, or what car you drive. It’s the confidence you find from within because you know you acted with honesty and integrity coming from a place of love every single time.

But it also doesn’t mean letting the world swallow your boundaries. Knowing you give life everything every day, and you wish for better for others doesn’t mean that you also become someone’s option. If someone treats you as an option, simply remove that option by closing that door. Why welcome someone into your life on any level who is too afraid to match your level of honesty and openness? How can you believe someone who doesn’t even believe in themselves? How can someone ever be there for you on any level whatsoever if they don’t even show up for themselves every day? How sad an existence that must be, such a lonely place to live, when where you don’t even know who you are because you are too afraid of the shadows of your past that you’ve let them turn into ghosts that haunt you even when you are alone.

I know my skeletons. I’ll share them if you ask me to and I’ll always answer you honestly. I have no ghosts of my own, and the one I once shared a house with was a wonderful ghost who always put wood on the stove on cold winter nights so it wouldn’t go out (there are witnesses!). Nah, I have no time to scale walls or wonder who’s looking my way. It doesn’t matter now, because I’m not listening. I’m busy swimming in the ocean. It’s too far away from shore for you to reach when you’re afraid.

Oh and I know I said I wasn’t strong yesterday. I’m strong today. Thank you for that. You make me a better person. I love you ❤️