stories

I've been listening to 'Harder than you think' by Public Enemy with the promo video for the 2012 paralympics: video. 

It inspires me. There's a line from the song: "Harder than you think is a beautiful thing."

Sometimes you have to bring your own hope. Sometimes you feel like you can't go on, but you don't have a choice. So you just do it, and it's invigorating, literally. You're returned to yourself. You remember who you are. 

I've started living my new life, but these mental chains, demons or whatever you want to call them still have such a hold on me, still oppress me and cause me pain that goes on day after day, week after week, month after month. I live in it! I live in this! And it's crushing me. I almost give up because things are so bleak and there's no escape, but I don't. I hold on and fight and find some temporary relief, but only temporarily, then it's back to this outrageous struggle that's crushing me, against which I have no defense. 

But I made peace with it. I went from living in dread that this is my life now - this pain that may never end, grinding me into the ground - to an attitude of acceptance. If I have to live like this I will. I'm ready for it. There's always a sense with this struggle that I've managed to evade it in the past but now it's caught up with me, and it's undoing me. 

I always feel like that's so tragic and such a bad thing. It is, but there's a story here. There's a new life that I'm living. It's defined by my daily goals. 

In the last few months I've started writing about the progress I'm making and the victories I'm having. I've written 255 pages of bullet points, and counting. One point I wrote today is this:

• Every day, whatever is happening, I achieve as many of my daily goals as I can. That is the reality of my life. That is my new life. All of the sad stories about failure and lack and deterioration and being abandoned, are fading.

These narratives still seem so much a part of my life and it seems like they're crushing me. The crushing is real, but they're crushing the old me. My new life has only just begun. It's like a seedling and the old stories are like a thunder storm, but storms pass and seedlings grow.