Lauren Jarvis-Gibson

Even if you don’t have someone to greet you as you walk into your home. Even if you don’t have someone to lay beside you as you fall asleep. Even if you don’t have someone to kiss you each morning. You aren’t alone. You have yourself. And you need to start treating yourself like someone worthy of loving.

Let your life be. Let your life slow down. Everything that you want will come when it needs to. And everything that will come your way, will happen when it is supposed to.

If anxiety were a person, this is what I would say to him. I would beg him to get out of my head, to let me go. I would shout at him like he was an ex boyfriend saying, ‘leave me the fuck alone, just go’. But anxiety didn’t care what I thought. Anxiety didn’t care what I wanted at all.

I hope I leave you now with the aftertaste of regret when you remember everything you could’ve had.

I think I really loved it though. Us. The idea that we would actually make it. The idea that maybe, just maybe, you’d be the one to make my sadness disappear. The idea that I could love someone.

Be patient with yourself. Give yourself credit for all that you have accomplished, and all that you are doing right this very second. Have faith, and have hope for your future self.

So what if you are failing and falling right now? So what if you aren’t ‘making it’ just yet? So what if you aren’t in love right now? That doesn’t make you unworthy. That does not make you trash. So, please, stop making yourself into someone smaller than you are.

We can control the hope that we carry within our bones and our bloodstream. And we can try to smile. Despite the sadness, despite the tears, despite the deaths, and despite the tragedies. We can try our hardest, to just keep believing. And to try to be happy, despite the darkness.

Anxiety doesn’t care about how happy we are or what is going on in our lives. It is always there. No matter what we do, no matter where we are, and no matter who we are with, it can happen at any moment. The fear. The shaking. The images that cross our mind at lightning speed. The panic. The twirling of our hair. The need for more oxygen. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I hope you learn to say goodbye to broken relationships. To all of those people who let you down, and to the people that you let down. I hope you can be able to forgive them, forgive yourself, and move on with your life.

Success doesn’t come easily. Happiness doesn’t come easily. Loving your life doesn’t happen in a day, or in a year. That’s why life was meant to be a coin toss. To shake you around until you finally find your place. To show you that failure will one day lead you to your destiny. And to show you that hard work, the dirty and exhausting work you are doing right now, will one day be all worth it.

Sometimes love is not enough to keep a relationship together. Do not let this make you become bitter.