amani

“I tried looking into her eyes to make sense of my own life, but found senseless realizations. I was reckless and she was justification; a vacation from the monotony I lived in. And avoiding risk felt nice until I realized, I was avoiding purpose.”

The world is a big place that is full of people and the stories of their daily lives — their likes and dislikes, family and friends, and hobbies and coping mechanisms. We find ourselves just existing, often caught in a robotic routine. This is what led to the moment in my life in which I began to feel things slip away.

It started slow. Almost like how one pictures a snowball rolling down a hill. But as that snowball rolled, it grew bigger and bigger.

“And it’s all new but I love her.”

I fell in love with this new life. This new Ryan. The going and coming around with not a care in the world about those who cared the most about me. It was easier to not think about the ones I was hurting. My justifications made this possible. It made sense to me, and that’s all I cared about.

“A half-baked smile and a love to pretend. But prior to then, love was nothing more to me than a vacation. A vacant motivation to avoid the means it takes to reach any real end.”

It went on for too long: the fake life and the bad decisions that I continued to make in order to feel fine about the life in which I felt trapped.

“But there’s no way of knowing when all I’m doing is coping – with my own pride. And my past would fight with me hoping I would find truth.”

The hardest part was realizing that this new life was not real. I had become something that I was not. Old friends would point things out to me. They would tell me that I needed to change back, back to the person they once loved. But I just couldn’t see it. My pride became a problem that was blinding me from the old life that I once loved; that was the life that I really needed to live again.

“And I’m empty. My heart is caving in. And for whatever reason, I finally let somebody in.”

If you follow TWLOHA at all, you have heard us say that we believe people need other people. When we feel at our lowest and most hopeless, we need hope and love from those around us. This is what keeps us going. This is the key to recovery.

Thankfully, I found that someone.

“But I’m growing.” 

We all want to hear that recovery is quick and easy. But the honest truth is that it takes work. It took me a long time to be OK with where I am now in life. I realize that I, too, am still growing, but I’m hopeful my story will have a happy ending.

When I was a little girl, my understanding of revenge was as simple as the Sunday school proverbs it hid behind. Neat little morality slogans like “do unto other” and “two wrongs don’t make a right.” But two wrongs can never make a right, because two wrongs can never equal each other. For the truly wronged, real satisfaction can only be found in one of the two places — absolute forgiveness or mortal vindication.