Of Life and Living
written by: Jessa Erandio
@lines_verses
How do you start living your life when it feels like you’ve died a long time ago?
Let me share a story I’ve left behind in the past but I am remembering today. It’s one that started with “once upon a time” but didn’t end up with “happily ever after” or at least, not yet. I tried so hard to forget this story but over the years, it kept on coming back in little flashes of memories and today is one of those days…
I was a victim of countless childhood traumas. Orphaned at a very young age, I was betrayed, abandoned, and abused. I didn’t know what it felt like to have a normal life as a kid because it was like I was an adult trapped in a child’s body. Every day, I was surviving a storm of struggles. Every night, I was drowning in a sea of reveries. Back then, I thought that life was a criminal. It was a thief who stole my happiness and a murderer who killed my will to live. I have died many times in my mind but every time, hope revived me. Hope was the friend I never knew I needed, who never left my side no matter how bad my life got.
Sometimes, remembering this story makes my life a mess but somehow, I’ve learned to create rainbows from darkness and now, I can share this story even without, going into the pit of sadness.
Now if you ask me how to start living when it feels like you’ve died a long time ago, my answer is simple: You have to have hope. Life will surely make you give up, turn your beliefs into something else, and totally give in to your fears. But as long as you have hope that you’ll get through them and you have the right people to back you up, you will never have to be a prisoner of life. You will be free as a bird and boundless as the wind.
Indeed, hope is that one thing that will stay when everything else goes away.
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