Looking forward now, you can probably only see darkness.
The seas are rising and all you are trying to do is keep your head above the water - some days you will float with ease, some days you will have to fight and fight and fight against the current.
You can do things to make this daily struggle easier:
Listen to your favorite album, maybe it's one that you haven't listened to in four years, maybe it's one you picked up from the store yesterday.
Go for a walk in your local park. Bring a friend, bring a pet, or go alone. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Laugh when you want to laugh. Cry when you want to cry. Scream when you want to scream. Whatever you feel like you need to do to feel better, please do it.
Watch the sunset, watch the sunrise. When you watch the colors, let them soak into your skin.
Sometimes it may feel like you are every color in the world at once - ugly, dark, too much to handle.
But let me tell you, you are not. You are beautiful blues and pinks, greens and yellows, reds and purples. There may be too many colors in you to count, but that does not make you ugly or dark. You will never be too much to handle.
Bad things are going to happen - they will always happen.
But there will always be good things happening. Even more often than you would think.
The good things may not be as obvious, but you will need to be around to see them.
Stay alive for laughter - when you are sitting on the floor of your best friend's apartment at 2 a.m. arguing about who can make the dirtiest jokes out of Cards Against Humanity cards.
Stay alive for community - when you participate in your first march or protest, against a cause that you find most dear to you. You will be standing with people who have kind hearts and minds, just like you.
Stay alive for tears - the happy kind, like when you are staring into the big eyes of a small child of someone you love and you realize that the future is going to be so, so bright.
Stay alive for love - love of people, places, and things. When you are standing in the front row at your favorite band's concert. Your best friend is holding you, and all you can feel is love.
Stay alive for beauty - when you decide to take a day trip to the middle of nowhere in your home state. You will be standing in a field of wildflowers and rolling hills when it hits you - maybe this place isn't so bad after all.
Stay alive for change - there will always be change. It is constant and it is unavoidable. "Things have to get worse before they can get better," it's a cliche, but it's true.
But most importantly, you need to stay alive for yourself - I don't know who you are. I don't know how old you are, who you identify as, or what you have been through in your lifetime, but I know that it cannot stay dark forever.
As the days pass, you will begin to notice that even when it's bad, it's still kind of good, because it's better than it was before.
It's going to get better.
It is going to get better.
Be alive to see it.
