My (Slow) Return to Positive Living

If I can do it, so can you (Dancing Elephants Book Project: Positivity, Group 2)

Picture this. It’s a beautiful June morning. You decide to take a hike. The trail is shaded and full of vibrant flowers. Take a deep breath and the scent of burgers fills your nose. It’s a perfect day.

Somewhere on this trail is a hole. But you’re not looking down. You’re too busy enjoying the puff clouds as they float by or listening to the birds serenade you. You try to picture a more perfect day, a better feeling, and you can’t.

Enter the hole.

Everyone falls down one at some point or another. Maybe it’s the loss of a parent or your partner. Your childhood dog was diagnosed with cancer. The company is down-sizing and your position is on the chopping block.

Whatever it is, you don’t see it coming, just like you don’t notice the hole on the trail. You don’t notice it because you can’t fathom anything ruining this blissfully perfect day.

I’d had plenty of holes on my trail. Nothing too deep or so large that I couldn’t brush myself off and keep exploring. At least not until 2018, when I lost the one soul I couldn’t imagine living without.

For the first time in my life, I had no hope, no sense of the future. No belief that anything would make me happy again.

Positivity lost

Anyone who knew me before this life-altering event would describe me as persistent. Stubborn. Someone who had a positive outlook even when the walls were crashing down around me.

I didn’t need walls. I thrived on chaos. And there was always something on the horizon I was working towards.

Losing the ability to have hope for something, losing your desire to dream about a different future is indescribable. It’s like you’ve lived in a land where it’s light 23 hours a day. Sure, you’ve seen night and know about darkness, but you’ve never really experienced it.

It’s like someone who was born and raised in Florida. They’ve heard of snow, even seen a few blizzards on TV, but it’s impossible to know snow until you’ve lived in it, played in it, been trapped by it.

Now, you’re thrust into a land where the sun only comes out for an hour a day. Or so you’re told. Chances are, you’re sleeping through that one hour. After a while, it’s easy to forget there ever was a sun. To tell yourself you’ve always lived in the dark. That you like it better that way.

Crawling out of the hole

For the past four years, I’ve been living in a haze. Adjusting to life without that one special person. Four years went by and all I did was blink. I haven’t been living. Not really.

It wasn’t until recently that I noticed this. Or cared.

Grief has a funny way of warping your view and changing your beliefs. If me from five years ago saw me today, she’d be livid. She wouldn’t believe this me was even possible.

As hard as this time has been, I can see now it was necessary.

Building the stairs

The harsh truth of it all is I wasn’t ready to be happy yet.

I wasn’t ready to take the next step and emerge from my hole.

The hole, while constraining and terrifying, becomes comforting. It becomes home, your new normal, your safe space. Every once in a while, you notice the sun. You remember you’re in a hole, and the hole convinces you to stay.

One day, something happens. There’s no way of predicting when this will happen or what this event will be.

I woke up last week and felt motivated. To do what, I couldn’t tell you. For the first time in years, I felt the need to accomplish something.

Tip: when this feeling strikes you, DO NOT look at your to-do list. It’s paralyzing and intimidating, and you don’t need that kind of pressure.

Instead, choose something you’ve accomplished before. Choose something that used to bring you joy. Pick an activity you did when you were strolling down the trail without a care in the world.

For me, that first stair was running.

Pieces-parts, or climbing out

Before you roll your eyes and say, “Great, she’s one of those people,” let me stop you. Running is to me as jogging is to most people. I’ve never been fast (my fastest mile time was 10 minutes) and I’ve NEVER voluntarily woken up at 5 am to go for a run.

In seventh grade, I started cross country. I wasn’t very good. But at 12, I didn’t care. Running was one of the few times a day I was alone. It was me, my feet pounding the grass, and the wind in my face. It felt good.

Before I’d ever heard the word meditation, I’d found inner peace through running. Running helped me find my center. Running helped me forget my worries.

So last week, I ran.

Not far, not fast. I only ran a few hundred feet. But it felt right. It felt good.

The best part? I wanted to do it again.

Positivity makes a comeback

I may never know what caused that motivation to appear. To be honest, I don’t want to. All I know is that it was time. I was ready to make a change, to start climbing out of the hole.

It’s a scary thing, getting back on the trail. I don’t know what yours will look like, but mine is a hot mess. Weeds everywhere, flowers buried beneath litter, and the path is so overgrown it’s practically a deer path.

But the trail is still there. It always has been.

I know getting everything back on track will take time, so I’m focusing on what I want and taking steps to get there.

And I know you can, too.

Many thanks to Art Bram who gave me the courage to write this piece. You should check out his article, I’ve Found the Key to Living a Regret-Free Life.