I Am Better Because of It.

There is no universal solution for happiness: no diet, no house, no spouse will ever be perfect — ever. Circumstances will always change with every passing day, no situation is permanently perfect. In my few years on this planet, I have gotten to experience devastating event after devastating event and I am better because of it. Those six words have become the driving statement of my life and I want to share why that is so with anyone who will listen. I don't guarantee to change your life or make you feel better, I just have a story that I want to share.

I'll admit my outlook on the world had been incredibly grim for years, I did not want to wake up. I have felt haunted by my fears and insecurities. I found myself surviving rather than living. Every day felt like a chore and I always found myself lacking the emotional drive to push through it all. I was gaining weight, losing friends, and overall becoming less and less of who I thought I was by the day. That loss of sense of self dragged me to the breaking point. I was certain I couldn't do it anymore, that nothing was worth putting up with this feeling.

Everyone would tell me to just push through it, do this or that. Because I hurt, all of a sudden, everyone had to chime in with some sort of solution of which never seemed to do very much for very long. I tried forms of therapy, meditation, diets, sleeping less, sleeping more, eating less, eating more. That only made things worse; all these people counting on me to get better to validate themselves and failing them each time only drove me deeper into that depressive state. All I wanted was to be better for everyone around me. I kept pushing myself back to that breaking point over and over again trying to feel better so I could feel better for everyone else.

It was a year or two later when I finally let things change. I was so stuck holding on to who I wanted to be and who I was, that I had ignored who I had become. Through all of that pain and mental exhaustion I had drawn out new parts of myself. I was more critical and more detail oriented. My resolve had strengthened, and my experiences had toughened me. For the first time, I stopped to realize that through those experiences I had become stronger than the person I was before. I was better because of the pain, and once I recognized that it changed the way I choose to look at life. That change in perspective had shown me that any time that life became difficult I wouldn't have to just survive, but I'd be able to live through it and I'd be better because of it each time. Each ounce of pain turned into the experience I could share with the world so that others might not have to endure the same process for themselves or so that those enduring it might have a reason to find a new outlook on life for themselves.

Roughly about a month ago now a friend told me they were struggling, they could not be happy with their life. They could not find that reason to keep going on each day. They shared their story with me and told me they felt as if they could not bring themselves to be happy anymore. Their outlook on life was so familiar and the words coming out of their mouth were so similar to those that came out of mine, just a couple years before. I took the time to tell them my story as well, telling them that they were not by any means alone. They told me that out of everything they hated feeling like a victim, that their pain made them feel weak or helpless. At that point I explained to them the way I try to validate my pain, my belief that every experience good or bad makes you stronger and I asked them...

Don't you think you're better because of it all?