Thank You, Hardship

Dear Hardship,

Thank-you, you clouded my mental judgement, so I could not see the threats. I was blind in the dark and you taught me to grow the eyes needed to see. You blackened the hearts of my closest friends so that I could walk my own road alone. You allowed my heart to receive numerous blows in order to harden its core, I know now that everyone can not have access to your heart. I fumbled opportunity after opportunity in order to find your support. You reached me at my first moment of abyssal failure when I could have truly been engulfed within the fire of ultimate endings. Empowering my every move, you ripped me from the sludge of life and step by step recreated my body, mind and spirit. I was blinded by your absence seeking you by reveling in the pride of my achievements. You threw my relationship in the garbage multiple times only to have me pry it out of it's tattered formations. Once you swallowed me in a sea of lust, sending harpies to tempt me and my future. Hardship, I lovingly hated that you have made me purify my thoughts, as every horror of my mind was manifested instantly by your gracious hands. The intensity of your work ethic within my life was so impactful, I had to regain my conscious faculties in order to breathe again. The time in which you strung me up by my addictions was the worst, you never let me go broke and kept me wealthy so that I could keep feeding you. You forced me to make more and more money with promotion after promotion the addiction grew stronger and stronger, the money was the curse, not the substance. If I had run out of money I could finally quit but you shed that opportunity. No one else saw what I did, everyone focused on my performance and achievement. Then when I took charge my life fell apart and you beautifully orchestrated my comeback. Newly broken, I had to piece my life together to find the way in which I was designed to go. Darkening my true path so that I could only follow the light.

Most of what makes the journey worthwhile is the lessons learned through hardship. You cannot grow without adversity and every adverse situation is a lesson. Some lessons are incredibly hard to learn and some even have a expiration/pass date. The same lessons may even come in different forms, unfortunately these are the toughest to figure out and pass through. Each lesson is a portal to personal ascension. Sometimes, lessons are even deadly or near-death, personally I think the hardest lessons are the ones we encounter in romantic relationships. These lessons can leave scars that never quite seem to heal over and come back up every now and again. We must learn to head down the road that is best for us, if not, everything will be for naught. Stay true to what you have learned and stay open to learning. Victory over all adversity comes when victory can no longer be won, thus, adversity can never really be mastered but only battled without mercy. Learning is continuous, ageless and forever. Let it be known that all experience is both individual and communal, if you have an experience that has helped you learn share it with others as I have done. The more we share, the more we learn and the the better life truly can become. I grant you the opportunity to write your own letter to hardship and see what lessons it has metamorphized into within your life.