Life is hard, life is not fair. Not in the slightest. 

Life is unpredictable. You can plan it day by day, but life do not care at all. You have dreams? Desires? Needs? Or a schedule? Too bad. Life has it own schedule, and perhaps, its own goal too, which is to make us suffer, day by day, by being powerless in almost all situations.

I don’t think I have the right to talk on your behalf, but I think it’s safe to say, that, in a certain way, we had these feelings that our life isn’t really ours. Still, we make plan. We make decisions. We make promises. Not only that, but we try to bring order to the events we go through, thinking it will make sense, but it’s never the case. 

Feel familiar, isn’t it?

Is it that hard to accept we’re not in control? Until recently, I never put much thought behind the fact that my plans are all subject to change. Everything in my calendar, maybe. My number was called on August 20, 2023. As Monday arrived, my agenda was ready, but I was not. I wasn’t ready for it,

but Monday came anyway and went without me, and it did chokingly well. I never thought I could be so irrelevant to my own

life. 

How does that make sense that I know what’s going on, I witnessed time moving around, I recognize my life, but my soul wasn’t in there. I wasn’t there. How does that make sense to feel your own life like a stranger? And, how the hell no one had noticed it, except me? 

The only one missing me, was me. That’s a harsh feeling. The worst kind.

That was the reality I had to face: life moved on and left me behind, like I was nothing. I think some part of me thought that the life I was engaged in would wait for me, like it needed my permission or validation. Fast-forward, and much to my surprise, life moved on without me.

How does that make sense?

The day finally came, and I jumped back into life exactly where I left off, but the parachute didn’t open, and I crashed into the reality that everyone moved on. 

I felt like a stranger in my own reality. Everything is new, refreshed, renewed, still I’m the only one felling apart, again, and again, and again, until I don’t understand what’s happening anymore. 

Everything has changed. Everyone has moved on, and yes, everyone left me behind. I guess that they somehow got their own schedules to meet that didn’t included tracking mine. It was like waking up one morning and realize you’re all alone in the word.

Realizing this ripped out my heart from my chest. And, again, I bleed to death, with everyone stepping into my blood without a care, without feeling my soul tearing under their shoes.

I can’t blame them. I won’t either, cause, this made me realize that there’s not much to oneself. 

Never thought that we’re not as unique as we think we can be. Never thought that there is not a single thing special about us. What if that’s our truth? What if we’re all the same? 

What if we all suffer?

I do believe all suffer. Maybe not for the same reason, but for those I’ve spoken with, this is an unavoidable experience. We all know pain, often it is all consuming, with no end in sight. I found myself wondering if I was dead or alive, crying out for help, desperate to feel this helping hand touching our shoulder, but to be faced with only silence and misunderstanding.

I know that place so well, because that’s where I came from. I was desperate for someone to wake me from the nightmare that I had fallen into. I wanted someone to pinch me or grab a shovel and help me dig my own grave. I felt alone, confused, misunderstood, and lost in familiar places I once felt at home. I wake up in a panic or crying out loud. I long for the life I had before that one day. I miss that girl I knew so well. I don’t recognize this new me yet.  Pain is ugly and uncomfortable, it’s embarrassing and revealing. We don’t want to be weak or broken in a world that has everything on point. What would “they” say? I’m guilty? I wore a smile, shoved the feelings, and walked out into the world in perfect form. 

That was the front I presented. That was how I performed, with a fake smile—it stole my joy and left me feeling lonely. Suffering in my very core, yet unseen, unfelt, except when my gaze cross upon a mirror, so I, and only I can see the corpse hiding in plain sight.

What if never come back? What if I never wake up? What if I never find my fight? What if everything I love is gone forever? Is my fight gone forever? Did the best part of me die that August night? Does anyone know that I’m a shell of whom I once was? Do they care? Will they ever see me at all?

Everyone says they understand, but how comes I never felt that way? How can they understand me? How can anyone say they know how I feel?

Maybe they don’t know what to say and just spit out something they think might help me. I guess I did that too at some point of my life. It didn’t help then; it doesn’t help today.

What if we live in a world that doesn’t know how to approach trauma with caution and compassion? Or treat grief with respect? 

What if this is the reason why I felt like dying would be better than living?

Am I the only one who feel like death is the only place we can find peace? What if this is all we’re longing for? What if, beneath the layers of our individual stories, we share a common ache—a pain that transcends the specifics of our tragedies?

I have often wondered if the agony that grips my heart in the quiet moments is not so different from the torment someone else endures in their own isolated corner of the world. Sure, the reasons would never be the same—my pain born of one devastating event, yours perhaps from another—but the raw, searing pain is the same.

Have you ever asked yourself, “why am I even alive.”  Or “if this is life, I don’t want it,” if not, congratulations, you have truly made it. In whatever way it is. Life is hard. 

Living is hard, and living after tragedy strikes… I don’t have the words for that life. In a world of tough times, hard hits, painful goodbyes, sprinkled with a little bit of happiness, we need each other more than ever before, even though we don’t realize it.

While I was busy digging my own grave after tragedy struck, people kept showing up to take my shovel out of my hands. A few came along to help me dig deeper, but almost every person took the shovel and wiped the dirt off of my face. I lived through a horrific attack, but I survived because of the people who met me where I was. I’m grateful.

They didn’t understand, but they cared enough to want to. These peoples, they too were hurt just like me. Just like you too, somehow. I can’t tell you how to feel,

I can’t tell you how to heal. I don’t know your story or your experience, but I know that one day you woke up to a life that was unfair and unfamiliar. Maybe fear and sadness led you to that dark place I call loneliness. Death, divorce, car wreck, breakup, loss of a pet, job, home, financial security, a move, anything, and everything that changes the life we are familiar with. Validate your trauma.  I had given up. I had nothing to left to give. I sat in my darkest hour, and I wanted to die. For real and for good. I had reached the stage of grief my therapists referred to as acceptance. The problem was, I could not accept the reality I kept waking up to.