[Guest Post] The Constant Battle

This is a guest post by Madison Sonnier who sent this exquisitely personal story to me. You can connect with Madison on her blog called Journey of a Soul Searcher.

It wasn’t until I told myself that it was normal to cry yourself to sleep on a semi-regular basis that my soft crying exploded into gasping, vehement sobs.

I threw the covers up over my face and gave myself total permission to just let it all out. Every feeling I’d been stuffing down, every issue I’d been avoiding, and every self-damaging thought rose to the surface and shot through my veins like a painful injection.

As I lay there sobbing my guts out, I suddenly seemed to retreat outside of myself. All of a sudden, I wasn’t the one sobbing on the bed. I was the one watching myself sob on the bed.

I saw a girl who was secretly beginning to crumble inside. I saw a girl who wanted love more than anything in the world. I saw a girl who was afraid and didn’t know where to turn.

And then I realized something. I was the one that had put this girl in so much pain. I was the one that told her she was pathetic and unlovable. I was the one that reminded her every day that there was something wrong with her and that she was never going to change.

And then I realized something else. Despite all the pain I had caused her, she needed me the most. She needed me to be her friend instead of her enemy. She needed me to root for her and pull her out of bed every morning to face the world. She needed me to take the unnecessary weight off of her shoulders and teach her that love is the only thing that matters in this world.

I don’t unconditionally love myself, but that doesn’t mean I never will.

I constantly find myself being resistant to change, but that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me.

I’ve been left and let down by many, but that doesn’t mean I’m unlovable.

I have intense anxiety issues, but that doesn’t mean I’m pathetic.

I have bad days, bad weeks, and even bad months, but that doesn’t mean my heart will never be in a good place.

I am a constant work in progress. We all are.

I’ve been really hard on myself lately because I’m not as happy as I was several months ago. I went through an intense healing period of finally being okay with myself and I feel like I’m slowly falling back to square one again. So I’ve resisted. I’ve lied to myself. I’ve treated myself with the complete opposite of compassion and respect all because I’m desperately trying to cling to that safe and hopeful feeling.

But nothing lasts forever and no one is ever 110% okay with themselves. No one ever makes a complete 360° transformation where they never again face an obstacle or hardship.

No one is immune to fear, sadness, anger, or contempt.

Me and that sobbing girl on the bed both have a lot of work to do. We need to be nicer to each other. We need to be patient with each other. We need to accept each other, flaws and all.

And we will have to work at it every day.

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Madison Sonnier shares her life insights and personal ramblings at http://journeyofasoulsearcher.blogspot.com/
You can follow her on Twitter @MyLyricQuotes.