Falling Apart in Fall

Jeff Buckley // "I have no advice for anybody...except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time, and how that is beautiful...even places you hate."

From Nitch.com.

I'm in a place I've never been. I left my lover, I'm buried in family problems, my finances are crumbling, and my future is approaching. Fast. My moods fluctuate with the weather and the weather is always changing. I'm alone for the first time in my life.

It's difficult to remain positive at times when your thoughts are beaming blue, covering the sun in your mind. It's even more difficult to adjust to new days, new ways, and still somehow feel the same. Maybe you can relate.

If I've learned anything from being here, looking up from the deepest place I've encountered—yet surely not the deepest place I'll be—it's that there's a heaven not many talk about, there's a heaven inside me. It's called peace of mind.

The only constant is change, I'm sure you've heard. The world doesn't move for you; you move with it. The growing wrinkles on your skin are there to prove it. And it doesn't have to scare you. It doesn't have to make you feel alone. Why, like the trees, we've learned to move with the breeze, not fight against it. You didn't even notice that you've been changing this whole time.

I can't help but consider myself naive, because you, reader, have most likely undergone much worse than I have in my lifetime. But I have a philosophy that many other live by and that you might find interesting.

There are two sides to the coin. There is ying and there is yang. There is negative energy and positive, and you need both to survive on land. We need the happy to be sad and vice versa. So, with this in mind, can a change of mind be your saving grace? Can you believe that every experience is one to learn from, a sort of adventure, a poem waiting to unfold? When your guts are wrenched and your chest aches, when your swollen eyes can no longer see, when your energy is drained—you are living broken-hearted, you are living in despair—you feel something inside you has died, except you do not realize that pain means you're alive. More alive than you've ever been. You feel everything. Or you've become numb. Yet your heart is still pumping blood.

When you wake up to the patterns that you will undergo, your perspective surely shifts. You'll never stop running into problems, you'll never stop feeling pain. But you'll also never be far from happiness, if you practice what I've said—turn your worries into poems, find a way through the pain. Learn from every heartache and morph yourself to be a greater person than what you had believed.

So, you've come to grieve with me today. Life is changing and it's often difficult to hold on. But this sadness I'm enduring, this loneliness, has redirected me. I looked inside of me and found that no matter where I go and who I lose, I'll always have myself with me, my best friend—who I know will never desert me. You have the strength to realize that, too. They say you live and die alone, as if you need an external comfort. But every day you spend alone in bed, relaxed and still, so calm and free—that's the "you" to carry with, the "you" to marry. You are everything you need.

So, love the changes, love the days. Beware of pain, it won't go away. Just find a new way to experience it. Learn what you can, don't let the moment slip away. Be present in your emotions and I promise you'll be one step closer to finding your inner peace and ridding yourself of "loneliness."