When Why Becomes How
One question everyone asks themselves in private is, “Why is this happening to me?”
We ask that question because we are trying to make sense of an unfortunate situation we have found ourselves in. We also ask because somewhere inside us, we believe we may have done enough good to be spared from what feels like bad fortune.
Sometimes we close our eyes and hope it will go away, but the tears that fall remind us that we still have to live through it. Other times, we sleep, hoping that maybe when the new day appears with the rising sun, everything that happened the day before will be erased like a clean slate.
But no.
It is still there.
In our face.
Part of our life.
Then why becomes how.
How do we live with this? How do I accept this and make it part of my life? How do I make people see that it is just me, and still me? How do I make people understand that I am still a human being, and that this situation does not define me, even though it is now part of me?
Should I even care?
I do care.
That is why I need to know how.
Please, how?
There are days we forget that we even carry it around, because how has now become now. We become used to thinking of the skin as the thing we use to cover ourselves, to hide who we are, who we could be, and who we are afraid people might see.
But there are also moments when our hearts flutter at the thought of how far we have come. Moments when we wonder what new people are saying, or what they might be thinking. But even that fades away, because carrying those thoughts for too long can give us headaches.
No one person is special enough to avoid a situation that makes them feel worth less than the people around them. We can blame society, culture, or any other external force that teaches us to conform without our permission. But what we can control is how we mold the situation into our lives, so that it does not become a crutch, but an enabler to continue living.
And maybe that is the beautiful story.
Not that the situation disappeared.
But that we learned how to live with it, carry it, and still tell the story