September used to be a month where I had so much to say. Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Suicide Prevention Month. Recovery Awareness Month. Three things that have touched my life so deeply that sometimes they don’t even feel like topics anymore. They feel like parts of me.
Last year, I had drop after drop planned. I wrote constantly. I had so much to say about recovery, about suicide, about surviving things you weren’t sure you were going to survive. I knew those subjects intimately because I was still standing somewhere inside of them.
Maybe that’s why writing about them came so easily. I was there. I knew what it felt like to wake up and have staying alive feel like a task instead of a gift. I knew what it was like to have people look at me and say: “How are you still so happy after everything you’ve been through?” The truth is, most of the time I wasn’t. I was just really good at being happy anyway. At least looking like it or being loud and confident and sure of myself, even when I wasn’t any of those things.
I’ve always been that person. Nine times out of ten, I really am confident. I really am this happy go lucky. I really do know what I want. But there was a long time when simply continuing to exist felt like work. Then over the course of this last year, many things I once wrote about wanting, happened.
I wrote things that reached people I never imagined reaching. 224 went places I didn’t think it would go-not this quickly, not this far. I created events that brought people together. I found a home. I found a different kind of stability. My relationships changed.
Some got stronger, ended, came back around in completely different forms. I made new friends. I got closer to myself and let go of a version of myself that I was terrified to lose because I didn’t know who I’d be without her. I wanted to know if my health would be okay. If I’d find a house. If my family would find its way back to each other. If I would actually get to do the things I had spent so long dreaming about. And somehow, I did.
So this year, I found myself sitting here thinking:
Okay. Now what?
Because shouldn’t I be writing the testimony?
Shouldn’t I be saying, “Look at me! Look what happened because I stayed!!!” And I can. I am. I’m still here. I’m happy to be here. I want to be here. I know now that there is purpose in my life that I couldn’t have imagined when I was trying so hard to find a reason to keep going.
I know the Lord in a way I didn’t before. I have so much & I am rich in so many ways. My children lack for nothing. I have a car. A house. Clothes. Shoes. Electronics. Friends. Community. People who love me.
Things I used to pray for sitting right in front of me.
And sometimes, I’m still sad.
That’s the part I keep having to remember.
Because I think we accidentally turn recovery into this promise that once you’ve made it out, you aren’t allowed to feel the way you felt when you were in it.
Like healing means never being sad again. Like gratitude means you can’t complain. Like having everything you once wanted means you’re no longer allowed to want anything else. If you are loved, you shouldn’t feel lonely. As if you’re close to God, you shouldn’t have dreary days. If you survived, you should always feel grateful that you did.
But that’s not how being alive works.
Lately, I’ve been reconnecting with old friends and spending more time with new ones, and it feels like looking at a mosaic of all the people I’ve been. There’s the girl from 2016. The girl from 2020, from last year. The girl who was sick. The girl who was angry. The girl who was partying and who was grieving. The girl who was always writing. The girl who thought she knew exactly who she was. And then there’s me. Now. Sometimes I look at all those pieces and think: Who the fuck am I? What the fuck is life?
But, that’s what 224 has always been about.
Becoming. The in-between. The space between who we were and who we’re becoming. The reminder that we don’t have to arrive somewhere and stay there forever. Because even if we’re walking in God’s grace, we’re still human.
Even if we’ve climbed out of our darkest places, we’re still human. Even if life is beautiful, we’re still human. There will be good feelings. There will be really shitty ones. There will be days where the colors feel brighter than they ever have. And there will be Sundays where everything feels a little gray. There will be days when I look in the mirror and really like what I see. And there will be days when I don’t.
Perhaps, maybe sadness doesn’t always mean something is wrong. Maybe sadness isn’t always something that needs to be fixed. Maybe sadness can just be remembering.
Maybe it can be returning to a version of yourself you thought you’d buried. Feeling sad doesn’t mean I’ve failed at recovery. It doesn’t mean I’m going backwards. It doesn’t mean I’m ungrateful. It doesn’t mean I don’t love my life. It doesn’t mean I don’t love God. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be here.
It means I’m a person who feels things and I think that’s something I need to practice what I preach about. I have to remember my own words. I have to keep writing about the things I’m actually going through, even when it feels like I’ve written about them 101 times before. Because feelings may be fleeting. However, for me, some of them always return. And maybe that is one of the biggest pieces of suicide prevention that we don’t talk about enough:
You are allowed to not be okay.
Not in a way that romanticizes being unwell. In a way that tells you to stay stuck because you shouldn’t stop trying.
Just because you don’t have to be 125% okay every single day.
You don’t have to fix everything tonight. You don’t have to understand your entire life. You don’t have to know who you’re becoming yet. You don’t have to be all of anything.
We’re not supposed to know everything that’s going to happen after this. We’re not supposed to know everything that happened before. We’re not supposed to have every answer. Some days, some seasons, some years, it’s okay just to be some. Some happy. Some sad. Some certain.
Some confused. Some healed. Some still healing. Some becoming. And maybe staying doesn’t mean promising yourself that you’ll never hurt again. Maybe staying means giving yourself the chance to experience all of it.
The beautiful parts.
The ugly parts.
The confusing parts.
The ordinary parts.
The parts you haven’t met yet.
Because I’m learning that a life worth staying for doesn’t have to be a life where everything is good. It just has to be a life where there is still something left to become. Maybe we have misunderstood what it means to be okay. We talk about it like it is a destination. A little green checkmark at the end of a long list of things we were supposed to overcome. Are you okay now? As if “okay” is a place you arrive at and unpack your bags. But I don’t think I’ve ever actually lived there. I don’t think anyone does. I think we move through it. In and out. Forward and backward and sideways. I think we wake up one morning and realize we’re okay, and then three hours later we’re crying in the car because a song reminded us of someone we used to be.
I think we can be deeply grateful and deeply sad in the exact same afternoon. I think we can be healed and still have scars that ache when the weather changes. That’s not failure, that’s simply being alive. We have become so obsessed with transformation that we forget the strange, quiet holiness of remaining.
There is so much we cannot see from the middle of a moment, so much uncertainty. We don’t know what is waiting around the corner, who we’ll be next year, what we’ll love or who we’ll meet. Maybe uncertainty isn’t proof that life is meaningless. Maybe uncertainty is proof that the story isn’t finished.
