Silver Linings

Something strange happens when your worst fears come true.

 When you wake to find your nightmares live and breathe, and your life breaks to little bits in front of your face. When you can only helplessly look on while the worst happens and it can't seem to get any worse, and then does. In those moments, you die a little. Pieces of your heart and mind are chipped away, never to be recovered. And it hurts awfully. But this is to be expected. It is the logical outcome of the situation at hand. It's easy to understand why you feel the way you do. That heartbreak is not what is strange.

I think most of us fall asleep most nights worrying about all the terrible things that could happen to us. We allow those thoughts to run over and over in the treadmill of our minds until they become soothing to us. We spend years cultivating lives motivated by preventing worst-case scenarios. So on the off chance that one day we wake up and worst-case has pushed its way through the front door, we are rarely surprised. And we react accordingly. According to plan, we fall down in a heap and sob until we can't anymore. Our reaction to fears coming true isn't strange, either. We've practiced that part in our minds.

And after we've cried our tears and wallowed for the allotted time, we get up. We wake up with tear-soaked pillows and heavy hearts and we keep going. We go about our lives, performing the same routines, if only with small variations. We go to work or school much the way we did before. We may not realize it right away, but things are different--brighter, sharper. Without even realizing it, we have become stronger. Some people notice this about themselves right away and become prideful about it and vow to never let themselves sink so low again... Getting stronger after facing resistance also isn't strange.

But some of us take longer. The realization comes slowly at first. Little events unfold differently. We stand up for ourselves and others when we wouldn't have before. Reactions that we planned out before happen spontaneously. Hesitation decreases. As the sun rises and sets, and weeks and months pass, we become more sure about who we are. And we too realize we are stronger. But only because we know how vulnerable we are. It becomes beautiful.

This is what is strange: when your worst fears come true, you have nothing left to be afraid of, and this is a good thing.

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