Never gonna give me up.

I haven’t written in awhile. I started out strong and then well everything I thought I had built came crashing down around me.

It got dark. Life just really sucks sometimes & I wanted to give up.

Give up on writing.

On school.

On my dreams.

And even for a brief second, on life.

So I reached out. I got help. I did anything and everything I could to get it all out of me

. I found a light at the end of the tunnel. The light was me. I had just forgotten how bright I could be.

Thanks to a few incredible people that reminded me of that light inside me and how fiercely I once shone it on the world, I started to get help. I’m beginning to find joy in the little things again, in my passion.

What makes you smile? On your darkest days, have you ever experienced some tiny sliver of light that parted the clouds? When life was pouring down on top of you, is there a little something that keeps your head above water?

For me, that light is my purpose in life. There is a reason for my darkest days and most painful moments. The more I allow those hurtful unpleasant feelings in, the more I get to take pleasure in the good ones. When you look back at all the good and all the bad, they are both memories eventually. Fleeting feelings that come and go.

I read a quote once that basically said you can only experience pleasure as deeply as you allow yourself to feel your pain.

There is a bitter sweet truth to that idea. We wouldn’t appreciate the good without the bad. We often don’t know what we have until it’s gone because we spend so much time chasing what we don’t have.

What if, for a moment, you stopped chasing something and started enjoying exactly what you already have. Do you think you’d find more reason to smile and less voids you want to fill?

See, I made a promise to myself a long time ago. A promise to never allow anything or anyone to keep me down for long. A promise to learn from every mistake and every moment of pain. A promise to never allow anything in this world to dull my shine or turn my heart cold forever.

It’s not an easy promise to keep. In fact, its the hardest thing I’ve ever done and possibly the hardest thing I’ll ever do. But I’ll never give up on myself. My momma didn’t raise a girl that is fragile or breakable. My dads didn’t raise a daughter that couldn't fight this world with a smile on her face. They taught me that life leaves bruises and scars, and that one day someone would love every broken piece of me.

And they were right. I do love every scar, every crack in my soul, every broken piece of my heart. I have found that in keeping this promise to myself, I found someone who loves me more than I ever thought possible.

Myself. There is a truly deep peace to be found in loving yourself. It is boundless.