I know things seem hard right now. Maybe even downright near impossible. You can’t remember the last time you truly felt joy. You don’t know how it feels to genuinely smile anymore. I look at you, and light has gone from your eyes. You’re drowning in your own emotions, and my anchor isn’t strong enough to pull you out of an ocean of hurt.

Your emotions are so frail, I'm afraid even my whispers will make you shatter into a million pieces. I feel like you’re going to break one day. I know you’re tired, and the uphill battle doesn’t seem worth it anymore. You feel lost. Trapped in a maze that you’re so desperately trying to escape. You’re going to throw in the towel one day. But I hear you. I hear you loud and clear, because I’ve been there. So don’t stop. I beg you, please don’t give up.

This; this doesn’t define you. The way people are making you feel. The way you are making yourself feel. That’s not who you are. Your mistakes and your struggles, no they do not define you. But what does, is how you react to this dark turbulent storm that’s waging a war inside of you.

I want you to know that you are loved. You are perfect, and you deserve to be happy.Happiness. Such a bizarre concept you haven’t felt in a while. You deserve it. More than anyone else you deserve it. So here’s my message to you:

Live life in the moment. Take a leap of faith and don’t look back. There’s not one set way to travel this road, and there’s not one set destination to arrive at. Life is full of twists and turns and peaks and valleys. It’s full of falls, and jumps and dead ends. And it’s full of encounters with people along the way. So many people. There’s people that come, and people that go. People who you might catch a glimpse of in the Supermarket, and then forget about the next second. People whose faces blur into the crowd. People who have witnessed your flaws and have left you behind, because they couldn’t quite possibly accept someone else’s imperfections. Or people who have left you in the dust all starry eyed just when you finally thought you had it all.

But see, they’re all here to teach you a lesson. Each and every one of them. Every single person you encounter has been placed in your path for a reason, and don’t you forget that. There’s people that are there to break us, tear us down, and make us feel small. But thank them. Thank them, because without experiencing the pain you wouldn’t appreciate those angels placed into our lives to lift us up and put our broken pieces back together so that we feel whole again. Or maybe, just maybe, better than whole. Complete. Happy. After all, isn’t happiness the ultimate thing we all crave?

So don’t take life for granted and keep holding on. Embrace it and embrace it hard. Embrace it when your world is falling apart and don’t settle. Choose happiness and when you wake up one morning feeling changed, you’ll understand exactly why it had to be the way it was. And you’ll smile, you’ll smile because it not only made you stronger, but strong enough to keep going.

You see, the journey’s not over. It has only just begun.