Strong

I read this quote when I was in university and loved it. I was no stranger to difficult circumstances, but even with all I had gone through, I could never have dreamed at the time that my world would so spectacularly shatter in just a few years. That all of the pain, disappointment, and anxiety I had felt would pale in comparison to the events that would befall me.

When your life does crumble, people will tell you how strong you are, how courageous you are. It made me terribly angry to hear that. I thought, "I had no choice in this; I am only surviving. That isn't the same thing as being strong!"

But dammit, I look back to February and March when I was a shell of a person and I think, "I have come a heck of a long way!" I think of the mental and emotional fog I lived in for months when I was out of my mind with grief. When I was afraid to leave my house, when I wished that fate would intervene and I would cease to exist, when I was a wraith among the living.

I look back and I can see that I never gave up. I didn't get bitter. I didn't stop there. So I am claiming now what I couldn't see then. I am strong. I am surviving the impossible every day.  I am choosing hope, choosing joy, choosing life. I'm not there yet. I don't even know where "there" is, but I am going to keep moving forward until I arrive.