Accept It.

PAST

Adjective meaning “gone by in time and no longer existing”

At one point, my parents were together & seemingly happy. Not too terribly long ago, I had a brother. More recently, a boyfriend emotionally abused me. Even more recently, I had my heart completely shattered by my first true love. That is my past. That has gone by in time and no longer exists in the present.

ACCEPTANCE

Noun meaning “the act of taking or receiving something offered”

Life has offered me some questionable opportunities, opportunities that weren’t offered to many others. I was offered a set of parents who, as much as they loved me, did not love each other enough to stay together. I was offered a chance to watch somebody I loved so dearly suffer to the point of exhaustion. I was offered the chance to watch my brother die. I was extended an opportunity to know what it felt like to have somebody control practically every move I made, every conversation I had, every moment available. Life gave me a shot at ridiculously great love, just to take it away.

It wasn’t until this summer that I really understood what acceptance meant. It means to take something given to you in a literal sense… I knew that. What I didn’t know was how important it is to not only take what is given, but to truly accept it and recognize that it is yours. In a literal sense it’s pretty self-explanatory, but let me just walk you through what I mean here in this more abstract sense.

Take my life as an example (something I clearly love to talk about). Life gave me a sick brother, divorced parents and a shitty relationship, followed by yet another terrible heartbreak. It doesn’t matter how much I hate these things; they are still mine. They are what have made me into the person I am today and the person I will become tomorrow. These crappy things were given to me and until very recently, I hadn’t truly accepted them. I took them, obviously, (because I had virtually no other choice) but I didn’t accept them.

Acceptance, for me, is an every day battle. Every day, I fight back tears as I remember the life that was cut way too short. Every day, I struggle past the way I’ve let myself be treated and how to break that cycle. Every day, I am nostalgic of the love I thought would be my last. I’ve realized it’s impossible to determine why life has handed me my particular set of cards. At the same time, it’s incredibly difficult to recognize that life happens as it does and I just have to roll with the punches. In my case, there have been quite a few, violent punches.

There have been nights (way more than I could ever admit) that these punches got the best of me, nights where nothing seemed worth it. This summer, I’d gotten to a point where I wasn’t able to physically hurt myself (I had gotten really good at emotionally damaging myself), but I had come to peace with having something else cause me pain. I didn’t care what happened, I didn’t even really know what I wanted to happen, but I knew that I would be okay with dying on “accident”. That night/week was the lowest, most embarrassing night/week of my life. Soon after that, I realized I needed a change.

           

It took what seemed like an eternity, but I can happily say that I’m on my way to a complete 180 in attitude. Yes, I still have my involuntary teary moments and nights that are nothing but straight up depressing, but I am getting better. I’m trying to keep myself busy (and boy, am I succeeding in that). I’m staying healthy in diet and exercise. I’m building a happier me but most importantly I’m becoming more open about my struggles.

Instead of ignoring and hiding my brother’s life (and death), I’ve embraced it. I don’t let it define who I am, but I don’t hide him anymore. I talk about what happened and how I’m handling things, almost 6 years later. Instead of letting myself dig a deeper hole in heartbreak, I’ve completely cut myself off from the men who brought me there. (I still think about one of them ALL the time and I can’t seem to quite shake the amount of love and care I will seemingly always have for him, but hey, you do what you can, right?)

I’ve grown so much, but still so little, in the last few months. It definitely wasn’t easy, but walking away from the only safe part of my life and forcing myself to be happy in my independence has made a world of difference. I’ve become the hero of my story, just by accepting what I cannot change.