To the Others in All of Us
To the girl who can’t hold down a job.
To the man who can’t pay rent for the third week in a row.
To the woman who lost her children to a liar.
To the boy who had his car taken from him when he couldn’t pay back what he owed.
To the girl who gets beaten from sunrise to sunset.
To the man who can’t remember how old his daughter is when his cell mate asks about his family.
To the woman who is sleeping in a bus stop after walking for days looking for a friends house.
To the boy who thinks disrespecting his mum makes him cool.
To the girl who brought a woman back to life after trying to commit suicide and was thanked with a broken jaw because she did not want nor need to be saved.
To the boy who thought it was a bit of fun and who wishes he listened to them when they warned him how scary and messy it would get.
To the girl who shouldn’t have had to grow up that quick and who missed out on being a kid because she was looking after adults who decided they didn’t want to to grow up.
To the man who jumps from couch to couch and who hasn't slept, eaten or showered properly in days.
To the woman who will no longer stand up for herself, because she doesn’t have the energy to fight for what is right anymore, because letting them win means she has the energy to keep going today.
To the boy who thinks these friends really care about him but will throw him under the bus at the first chance they get.
To the girl who trusts everyone and believes they won’t screw her over again, even though they made the same promise last week and today's excuse is even more pathetic than the last.
To the man who can’t ask for help because he’ll be seen as weak, who is lost but doesn’t want anyone to worry about him.
To the woman who will never be a mother.
To the boy who will never know his mother.
To the girl who has to look after her mother.
To the man whose mother died knowing that he was suffering and couldn’t be saved.
To the boy telling everyone he’s fine, who makes jokes to hide how much pain he really feels.
To the girl who just wants her mum, because mum knows how to make everything better.
To the man who roars abuse at everyone around him because he is angry at the world for screwing him over time and time again.
To the woman who regrets taking herself to emergency after she took too many pills, because it would be convenient for everyone if she just went away.
To the boy who suffered because of his parents greedy mistakes and is trying so hard to make sure he doesn’t go down that same wasted road.
To the girl who is called a “whore” or “slut” and believes it because they are the lesser evil of the nasty names she is called on a daily basis.
To the man who won’t live to watch his son do better than he did and whose son won’t understand why Daddy’s not coming home.
To the woman who gives and gives until she has nothing left and then gives some more because she doesn’t want anyone to go through the same hell she endures.
To the boy who doesn’t know what a home cooked meal is and has never sat down to a family dinner in his life.
To the girl who is desperate for her sister to stop pretending she doesn’t exist, because she knows she fucked up big this time but struggles to make it through each day knowing her little sister would rather think her dead than know that the stranger posing as her best friend continues to tear them further and further apart.
To the man whose daughter knows he’s not going to call but still waits by the phone and cries wondering why her dad doesn’t want her.
To the woman who loves unconditionally and still gets torn to shreds by those who promised to never hurt her.
To the others in all of us.
Right now it’s hard, life’s playing a sick joke on you that was never funny to begin with. It will get harder, that just comes with the territory. There’s a shit storm brewing and it’s headed straight for you. It doesn’t care who it takes down with you, and it’s not going away anytime soon. Please, please don’t bury your head in the sand and hope it will go away, or think that someone else is going to clean up this mess because I promise you that it’s going to come back and hit you ten times harder than when it came around the first time. You will never outrun it and the prick already knows where you’re going to hide before you do, this is bigger, faster and stronger than you. And it always will be.
Please don’t think that this is not fixable. This is heavy but it is manageable. You can have your life back, you can dress up your world even more beautifully than before. Life is going to be so good to you but only if you want it to be. The miserable and exhausting life you are living today can turn into a glowing and extraordinary experience filled with love and joy with no sign of pain, hurt, struggle, fear or heartache, but it’s going to take colossal amounts of time, effort, change, patience, acceptance and as much as you might not like to admit it; help from others who might not be so willing to help in an instant. And you need to be okay with that. They love you and will come around to the idea soon enough, they’re just protecting themselves and treading rocky ground carefully just incase, just know that it’s only so they don’t get hurt like last time.
For a while you’re going to be treated like a child. You’ll be supervised. There’ll be rules. You’ll hate it because you’re an adult who can do things yourself. WRONG!. You’re going to have to suck it up and get over the fun fact that your life as you know it is now on full blown house arrest, like a reckless teenager who got caught one too many times sneaking out of the laundry window to go and smoke cigarettes at the skate park with a boy who her parents definitely would not approve of.
For the last (insert relevant time period here) you have been, running a muck, doing stupid things with people who are obviously bad influences that you assured your parents time and time again were ‘good friends’ and not caring about the consequences, breaking the rules, turning your whole life and everyone else's life upside down, scaring your loved ones with your erratic behaviour and complete disregard for your own health and safety and to put it politely you have made an unnecessary fucking mess of the world you, your family and your friends worked ridiculously hard for and it will never go back to the way it was before. You won’t get your old life back, that ship has sailed and the only way to move on and get better is to focus on how you’re going to start again and how to do it right this time. You’re going to want to cry and scream and yell and swear and you’re going to want everyone to know how frustrated you are at yourself for digging this huge hole and you’re going to get frustrated with the fact that there is no easy way out this time. You will get angry at how long it is taking your life to return to ‘normal’ and you will breakdown and cry when you find out that this is your new ‘normal’. And you will have to be okay with that.
What we all failed to realise or what we all blatantly ignored when we made that first shitty choice is that you can come back from it, but the list of consequences is longer than we ever realised. We have chosen to set things straight, and to start repairing our lives. We are tackling sky high obstacles everyday and are getting knocked down hard. We fail. We succeed. We are watched and judged and are suddenly accountable to every man and his dog. The bit we didn’t think very hard about though is the fact that we ourselves will end up being our biggest judges and we quite often will not accept anything less than perfection on the first go. If we don’t see success fast enough, we have failed ourselves. This consequence was completely overlooked and may have not even been a thought to begin with. The everyday war you have with your own mind now makes all the wrong you have done and everything you have put yourself through seem like child’s play. Some days it’ll break you and some days you’ll feel optimistic enough to see that the grass is greener on the other side of this pit. You’ll soon return to your broken self and realise that the greener grass you’ve had your eyes on for sometime now, that grass is your neighbours grass, and you don’t get along with your neighbours. You will hold onto a tiny sliver of hope that maybe this tug ‘o’ war of emotions in your head will go away or even at least dull down soon, like really soon. But everyday you wake up hoping for peace of mind yet are greeted by an ambush of the same bullshit you went through the day before. That tiny sliver will get smaller. Everyday will get harder. And you will struggle not to slip back into your old ways.
To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell you if it gets better. There are no instructions, no cheat book and no quick detour. I feel exhausted all of the time. I feel worthless. And everyday I want to give up because I can’t be bothered anymore. I can’t say that I don’t care, someday’s I don’t want to care, I wish I didn’t care. I wonder if that would make life a little easier for me, if I stopped caring so god damn much.
You’ll feel all of this and more, and if you’re ready to change the pace of your life you’ll soldier on. You’ll put on a smile and be brave for everyone around you who loves you and who is rooting for you 100%. You’ll keep on keeping on, because this is bigger than just you and trailer load of mental, physical and financial baggage.
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