TRUE AT THE SAME TIME

I was a young mom the first time I really understood that two seemingly conflicted things could both be true at the same time.

I'd been having a really hard time, struggling to just hold on from day to day when one of my closest friends said to me, "Jojo... I think you should see a doctor. What I've been watching you go through really sounds like depression to me."

At the time, that perplexed me. I'd been having a hard time, sure, but... I'd just been laughing with my friends about something. If I was capable of moments of happiness, how could I be depressed? That, of course, stemmed from an inaccurate definition of depression, but it was also the first time that I understood that conflicting things could be true.

You can be depressed but also joyful.
You can be angry with someone that you love.
You can be tired, and yet awake.
You can share tenderness with someone who has broken your heart.
You can be motivated and yet worn out.
You can be happy and sad.
You can miss someone that you know you are better off without.

Heart truths, I have found, are rarely mutually exclusive.

Complicated creatures with complicated feelings.

And all true.

WHEN YOUR ROAD ISN'T THE SAME

Sometimes the road you're meant to walk down isn't the road that everyone else is taking.

You meander off on your own... down a path that you know that you're meant to take. But, when you look around, you realize that everyone else seems to be walking a different one.

And it's not that you doubt that yours is the right one for you to be on...  but at the same time... you kind of do. Maybe the other road is better simply because it's more often walked. Surely there is a reason for its popularity that you have somehow missed.

And so you doubt.  You doubt your road. You doubt your destination. You doubt yourself.

But popular doesn't necessarily equate to better. More-travelled doesn't necessarily equate to right. Company doesn't necessarily equate to truth.

So if you honestly feel that the road you're walking is the right road to take, remember that it's okay to go your own way. It's okay if no one walks yours with you. It's okay if no understands why you need to follow that path.

Sometimes you go the way no one else is going to become someone that no one else is meant to be.

THE TRUTH IS STILL THE TRUTH

Why oh why do some lessons seem so interminably hard to learn??

Our perceptions of the truth change.  But the truth doesn't.

Just because the truth is hard....
Just because the truth is difficult to accept...
Just because the truth is unpleasant...

It doesn't mean it's not the truth.

Just because I don't want it to be so...
Just because it hurts me...
Just because I want to run away from it...

It's still the truth.

I can hide from that.
I can try to bite it off in small pieces to make it more palatable.
I can pretend until the cows come home.

But the truth is still the truth and it won't ever stop being the truth.

And I'm just going to have to suck on that for awhile.