The wave you’re on won’t last forever

Welcome, all!

My name is Danielle and if I could draw a picture of contentment, it would be a snapshot of me and my closest girlfriends wearing sweats and eating chocolate cake together. Except when you zoom in on me, you notice the last bite of cake on my fork has just tragically fallen to the ground and it leaves my face looking a bit like Ron Weasley when he’s realized he’s surrounded by spiders in the second installment of the HP series. If you don’t know what face I’m talking about, then message me because we need to debrief.

Moving on.

Lately, it seems like many of my friends and family find themselves in a bit of a lull. A slump. A valley. A what-do-I-do or oh-shittery kind of moment in life. It sucks! And all I want to do is hug them all and tell them it will all be alright. And if it isn’t, then at least they have one lady in their corner.

But then when I think about them more, I can’t help but think of how many times I’ve felt similarly to how they’ve felt. And I have thought, “when is this wave going to blow over?”

I used to pray and think real hard about some of the crappy things that I’ve been dealt in this life. There have been times where I’ve felt like there was one less than ideal thing happening right after another. After another. After another. When would the waves of pain, grief, sickness, injury, frustration, anger, [insert whatever less desirable human emotion that has a negative impact on oneself after a sustained period of time here] end?! And why does no one else seem to have this issue?!

But boy, was I wrong. Because I’ve realized we are all so very good at hiding these emotions and actually talking about these waves. Often times, we act like we’re on a surf board riding these waves out as smoothly as possible. When really, these waves are beating us to the bottom of the ocean. What does this look like? One example. When you ask someone how they are doing and they say something like, “I’m good! Pretty stressed with homework and my ankle has been bugging me in my workouts. But that’s okay, I know it’ll pass.” When really, they FEEL something totally different, and they want to say something like, “you know, I’m stressed about school and annoyed as hell because my ankle has been bugging me for weeks and it’s not getting better. And I’m frustrated, but I don’t want to say that I am because Rick over there has it way worse than me and I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining all the time.”

First of all, there’s no use in comparing your story to others’ stories. Not only are you invalidating your own experience, but you also make yourself feel more guilty about feeling what you’re feeling in the first place! If you’re sad, be sad! If you’re mad, be mad! If you’re angry, be angry! These are all valid emotions and do not warrant bad behavior, or poor temper, or a reason to be mean – ever. But they are real and should coped with properly – so let yourself cope with them!

Here’s what I’ve learned about trying to ride the waves. And trying to learn how to deal with them when they just keep on coming and coming.

I was made for all of these things. I was made for any battle I go through, and so are you: spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, etc…

I can’t sit here and “wait” for the waves to stop crashing on me. The more I “waited,” the more I found myself more miserable and spiritually low than I ever was. And I realized I’ll probably never escape these waves. Yeah, there might be time in between each one, and there will be times where there’s no time between one wave and another. But realizing that I have to quit waiting for the waves to stop gave me peace and utter joy!!

There’s not really a time that I remember telling myself, “today is the day you’re going to stop longing for the big break on the other side of this crap shoot of a wave.” I just remember that when bigger events continued to crash over me, the impact they would have had on me before had lessened.

Let me paint you a picture.

Over the course of my last summer (I would constitute the end of May as the start of my summer as that was the time I graduated from college), these “waves” crashed and they crashed hard. Like Mario’s kart slipped on a banana and wound up in princess peach’s turtle shell hard:

I graduated college- BLESS. I moved house. I moved house again. I busted my ankle playing at Hoopfest and ended up crutches again (don’t worry, I will redeem myself next year). I moved house again. And again. And again. To summarize my living situation: I wound up in 10 different living/housing spots this summer. Although I was lucky enough to have a consistent space to live at until I found a permanent home for the time being- shout out to my angel of a friend. My car broke down and I couldn’t drive it. Still can’t drive it. Moved into an apartment. Moved out of my apartment – it was uninhabitable for over 12 days because of the cigarette smoke the manager neglected to take care of (many lessons to be had here, I’ll share those out another time because those lessons taught me real adulting). Moved back into the apartment. Not to mention the emotional roller coaster that accompanied most of these “undesirable” events.

*deep breath* are you still with me?

That was over the span of 4 months. I thank my lucky stars and my Good God for all the answers to prayers and love I had amongst all of that.

HERE IS THE BEST PART!!!

This could have EASILY been one of THE CRAPPIEST summers of my life. Most of society would deem those situations as pretty awful. That they would warrant bad behavior or bad temper. That they mean I need to reward myself in a meaningful way when all of those waves stopped washing over me. BUT. That wasn’t the case for me. I have never felt so much more peace in my life. When “one thing kept happening right after another,” I genuinely felt “alright.” I knew that a poor attitude wasn’t going to change the situations, it was only going to make me more frustrated or sad. And I didn’t want to feed into that mindset and bring myself down further. Knowing that I had dear, loving friends close by and continuing to see my therapist definitely helped. I encourage you to lean into those you trust and love most as well as counseling if you’re interested. But, the main point is, I didn’t wait until I was out of each of those “bad” situations. I acknowledged that I had to deal with them, that I couldn’t put a time limit on when I was supposed to resolve them, and that I couldn’t expect them to go away.

Now, I look back on my summer and can say, “Wow. That all happened?” Because my focus on my summer wasn’t getting out of those “waves.” It was on the little things that I could look forward to when I was in the waves: cooking/baking with friends, going to Silverwood, going to the movies, working, late night talks, camping, etc. I let go of my expectations: that I deserved to have a time of no more waves, because that’s pretty unrealistic. I learned to be content in and out of those waves.

SO. To all that are struggling with their waves right now. You are meant for them. They won’t drown you. You will get to a period of smaller waves or a gap before the next one. I hope you can be content with where you’re at, even if it sucks at the moment. No one expects anything from you other than your best, and if your best feels less than what it has been before, THAT IS ALRIGHT! So go put on some sweats and eat some chocolate cake. And don’t worry about the piece(s) that might fall on the floor. There’s always more cake to be had.

All my love.

xo

“You are not a mess. You are a feeling person in a messy world.” – Glennon Doyle