It’s Never Too Late To Start Over

It’s never too late to start over. To hit the pause button. Breathe. Then begin again.

You don’t need to lose yourself in the shuffle, get caught up in your mistakes and your fears and your anxieties. You don’t have to hold onto your anger or your sadness and carry it with you in a little jar. You are more than a little jar, waiting to be filled by unsatisfying things—material things, superficial love, addictions and vices and so many other negatives that leave you feeling emptier than before. You are more than that little jar you feel defines the person you are, so much so that you try to fit yourself in its glass walls, try to keep contained within the edges and not overflow.

Life is imperfect. It’s beautiful and complicated and burdensome and messy. And you are a part of it, a part that grows and changes and laughs and loves and gets broken and comes back together. But there will never be a time when you can’t just step back and start all over.

There is no rewind, but you can always restart, let go. Let go of the toxic friends, of the urge to gossip, of the anxieties over what he said and she said, of the worry you feel over a future you cannot control. Let go. It’s never too late to put down that jar you’re carrying and pull yourself out of it. Grab your legs and arms and brain and heart and soul and reconstruct them back into the self you’re supposed to be. Reshape. Remold. Reconnect. And begin again.

You are not supposed to be this static person, this person you’ve always been and always will be. The world is continually shifting, and you are continually moving within it, in whatever direction you want. If you don’t like that direction, turn. Don’t turn back. Don’t turn around. Just turn. Right. Left. Diagonal. Cut across the grass. Take a back road.

It’s never too late to spin things around for the better. To leave what’s been broken and acknowledge that you can’t put it back together exactly how it was. To smile at the things you cannot replace, cannot fix, cannot make perfect. Nothing is perfect. You are not perfect. So don’t drag around that little jar, the transparent jar of your imperfections for the world to see, for you to see as a constant reminder of the ways you’ve failed. Forget the jar. Forget how you’ve always been defined by it and define yourself by something new. Throw it down. Shatter it. Watch it fall and break and crush into a thousand tiny pieces and celebrate that change hurts, and that growth sucks. But now you are free falling, and it is terrifying, but terribly freeing.

Then start over. Begin again. All at once, or piece by piece. Start with the little things. Then be patient as you begin again, becoming new, becoming yourself.