The Weight We Carry

HI Everyone,
This is a very personal and special video I would like to share with you. Long story short (because youtube allows only so many words in the description). I lost my friends, family, dream job, gained a ton of weight, and felt extremely lost in life. I lost my identity. I had spiraled into seasonal depression and was very close on giving up on my life dreams. I'm here to remind you that you can get through anything life throws at you, no matter how heavy it may feel.
I wrote this poem/essay a few days after I recorded this video. I am at a place now where I would like share it, it just so happens it is on the very day that my dream job is having their grand opening, and I am so grateful that I am at a place now that I can truthfully say, I don't regret a damn thing.

The Weight We Carry
Sometimes, it is going through the motions in life, pretending to be happy. It can be the lie that we tell ourselves that we don’t need to accomplish our wildest dreams in order to be fulfilled.
Or maybe it is falling asleep to someone you love and care deeply for, but that someone doesn’t reach your soul. That is is easier and convenient to stay together and just wait it out.
Perhaps, something has been triggering you about a traumatic event that happened years ago. That the only way out of continuously reliving that trauma is to create a self-destructing behavior as a distraction.
It’s possible that you were slapped in the face with a betrayal. That your ‘family’ could smile and encourage you one day, and then make a unanimous decision to get rid of you the next.
This weight could also be truths that you are keeping secret inside you. That you feel imprisoned because you are not able to share your story, so no one understands why you made the choices you made and the truths behind why you feel the way that you do.
I have been through the ringer the last several months when I had previously been pretty damn happy. You could easily say, the happiest I had ever been. But huge life altering events have kept being loaded up on me like heavy plates. After awhile, you feel like you are no longer strong enough to hold that load. You fall. The weights have made a huge mess. You don’t know how you are going to get back up with all this weight ready for you to slam you back down.
Even during the really tough days I kept trying to remind myself that each of these heavy unfortunate situations are there for a reason. That each one is a lesson, and that it is there to make me stronger. That each of these heavy weights are the building blocks that I needed to build my biggest dreams. Recently when everything felt so heavy, I’m not going to lie, I’ve had thoughts of chucking all this weight and calling it quits. I told myself, “This is too fucking hard. I give up. It’s not worth it. This isn’t what I wanted it to be. I am miserable working my ass off, so I might as well be miserable being lazy and settling.”
No matter who we are, life is FUCKING hard. We already know that is not always sunshine and rainbows! Everybody goes through trials in life. Most people drop to their knees once things start to get heavy. Some try really really hard until they can’t hold on anymore. My friends, I am here to say, it is okay if you have fallen. It is okay if the weight in life has taken you down. What is not okay is refusing to ever get back up again. What is not okay is if you tell yourself, “I’m not strong enough” “It’s too heavy” “Why do other people get help with their weight” “Why is my weight so much heavier than yours?” or even something as silly as “Ehhh, I don’t need to pick it up, life is fine here on the ground. There’s no weight here, everything is fine.”
It is not going to be easy. It’s not always going to be fun. You are going to have to do things that you don’t want to do. You will have to sacrifice what you may want in the moment for what you need to make you happy in the future. I know life can really suck sometimes. But the shitty things that happen in your life does not determine the quality of you life, the thoughts you have about those events determine the quality of your life. Do not let other people’s opinion of you determine who you are or what you are capable of. Haters do not get to choose the outcome of your life. YOU get to choose the outcome of your life. If you go to bed with a dream at night, wake up with a plan to achieve it. If you are in a relationship with someone you do not love, communicate and leave. If your friends and family have betrayed and hurt you, cut them out. If you are at a job where they do not appreciate you, get a new one, and quit the old one. Everybody will be gifted different weights in life. And yes, I say gifted with intention. You can choose to lay there and learn how to live with this weight constantly keeping you down. Or you can choose to get up, embrace the challenge, and learn how strong you really are.

Carry