“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” ― Najwa Zebian

I read that quote and I immediately think of all the emotional and mental burdens I carry around with me daily. Burdens that I should have set down long ago, yet somehow, they’ve managed to hitch a ride for years in the corners of my mind. I think we’re all guilty of this at some point in our lives, after a breakup, after the passing of a loved one or after a particularly difficult time of our lives. Whatever the burden is, or was, we haven’t been very good about dealing with it and letting it go and over weeks, months or even years it takes something from us. It takes our ability to fully trust someone, to truly fall in love or to believe we are worth the effort. These burdens weigh us down and make us weary, and in turn, we might miss small opportunities that could lead to large successes in our lives.

I am by no means an expert on letting things go or even dealing with them properly. I can admit I haven’t had the best of coping mechanisms and I’ve lost huge parts of what made me, me while trying to help others collect the parts of themselves, or in wondering what I could have done differently, when I wasn’t the one who did wrong.  Instead of accepting that sometimes people do really crappy things to other people, and understanding that it wasn’t my fault and never will be, I pick apart every moment leading up to then. I over analyze how maybe on some random Tuesday I was too distant or I didn’t really give all of myself, knowing full well that I did.

Since asking for help, something I refused to do for years, I have found that those tiny voices that my mind shushed were not wrong, and I should have slowed down to listen to them. “You are enough.” “Your feelings matter.” “You deserve more than this”. All echoed in the faintest of voices in my mind but I never acknowledged them because I felt I could fix, or ignore, the problem. Before I knew it, the problem had gone from a pile of stones, to a monstrous mountain I now dragged everywhere with me.

That metaphoric mountain slowed down everything about me, things I never truly faced or dealt with now nagged on my every thought and move and it exaggerated my anxiety to levels I had never felt before. I felt like I was sick every single day, even though the doctor told me I was perfectly healthy. So, I had to make a choice; was I going to let myself wither away or was I going to let go of this mountain and take back who I was? Today, I am trying to do the latter, making sure I do one thing every day that’s for me, and only me. I am trying to remember that just because someone doesn’t see my worth that it doesn’t mean I am not worthy. I am reminding myself that although something I truly wanted didn’t go the way I’d hoped, there are other things for me on the horizon. Lastly, I am trying to remember that I have gone through harder and more challenging things and that I have always pulled myself up and I owe it to myself and most of all to my daughter, to keep doing so.