21 Lessons in 21 Years

1. You may never feel enough. Throughout your whole life, you have trained yourself to believe that if you can just do this or just wear that or just look like them; you will finally feel worthy of this life. As long as you hold yourself up to your own self inflicted rules and all too high standards of which are impossible to attain; you will never be happy. It's scary to allow yourself to just be...to open your heart and to listen to the drum of its faint yet unchanged melody and to hear that this is who you are. You can either take yourself or you can try to leave yourself. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. You can't leave yourself. This is you and the longer you try to deny that soul or change its very intrinsic being; the more you will suffer. And perhaps you may think like me, 'well I deserve to suffer if I must inflict this world with my presence'...dig deep enough within your heart and you will realise the truth, that that thought is the very core belief of not enough-ness within itself. You have to endure yourself. You have to live and love and accept all that you are...because who that is, really is pretty amazing.

2. You can not hate yourself into a version you will finally love. Self love begins with shining the light on your deepest darkest shadows and allowing them be seen, heard, felt and finally transmuted into sparkling shimmers of love. 

3. This too shall pass. Each dark dusk must end with a beautiful new beginning of light. No darkness will last for ever and neither will any pain. Sometimes it can all become so overwhelming...a simple moment becomes so consuming, so large and terrifying. In that moment, it encompasses your whole being and suddenly life itself seems so dark, inescapable and frightening. This is just a moment. This is not your life. This pain is nothing but storm clouds rumbling through the sky...soon to be replaced with beams of warm bright brilliance. I know the deafening thoughts are ringing through your ears, the flashes of fear are blinding you of seeing any good and the floods of tears are pulling you under; but just you hold on. Keep swimming. You will not drown for you have a lifebuoy just waiting for you to grab; hope.

4. You always have a choice.

5. Pain is the greatest connector. Psychiatric hospital taught me that there is no greater connector and soul bearer than pain. 'If I tell these private thoughts of mine, it is because I know they are not mine alone, and that practically everyone is trying to say the same things and that the writer is only a man who says out loud what other people think or whisper.' Sitting down for dinner with the six other patients on the eating disorder ward taught me how pain transcends all genders, ages, ethnicities and people. We all had different stories, different backgrounds, different lives yet one thing connected each and every one of us; we were each in turmoil, we all used food and our bodies as a way of escaping our inner pain and we were all fighting really really hard. I now believe that suffering supersedes all outward projections and inner beliefs. When I found myself being held by a lady 30 years older than me as I cried because the nurse had poured my milk just slightly above the required line, I finally felt understood and accepted. She understood the thoughts, the pain and the irrationality of the eating disordered voices; she had the exact same monster in her mind telling her the exact same things. We were so different yet so exactly the same. We would later spend the next five months being each other's daily cheerleaders as we came across challenges like a horrific St Patrick's day dessert that only we will ever understand and still giggle about to this day heheh...(long story including screaming at nurses and disgusting green (?!?) cream). I learned that pain strips back all outer facades and reveals the true vulnerable, scared yet sacred soul beneath. Whether you are rich or poor, black or white, young or old...we all have pain and we all endure suffering. How refreshing and reassuring to know that you are not alone.

6. As long as you hold fear, you will never be free. Where there is fear, lies opportunity. For fear is a beacon from your heart, pulsing with passion, waiting for you to grab its hand and run together in the direction of freedom, a path carved by your innate desire to be free. Fear is the greatest unrest within our souls. For how can we feel fully alive when there is a self inflicted restriction within us? As long as we hold fear, we will never be free. Only in facing our fears can we allow our toes to dip into a limitless world, one in which nothing can hold us back, because finally, we are not holding ourselves back.

7. Our thoughts are not always true, our feelings are not always real and our perception is not always clear.

8. You are your own biggest critic. If you spoke to others the way you speak to yourself, you would have no friends left at all. People don't see you the way you see yourself, both internally and externally. I am too busy worrying what you are thinking of me and you are too busy worrying what I am thinking of you. In reality, neither of us are thinking of another, just of what each other is thinking of each other...mouthful hehe. My best friend said something to me recently and it really really stuck with me. I was feeling upset about how I looked before we went out and she said 'Lauren you have looked at yourself in the mirror  for the past 21 years. You have inspected and analysed every single inch of your skin and crevice of your body. You can account for each and every of your own perceived flaws but will omit any possible beauty. You have taken these pieces and created a vision of yourself of which only hold. When someone looks at you, they don't see the you that you have torn apart, investigated and scrutinised for all those years..they see you with raw wide open eyes. They don't see you as dismembered pieces of flaws and failings but as one whole, unique and perfect person. They see you for the you that we all see and love and that hopefully someday, you will see too.'

9. There is no perfection, only beautiful versions of brokenness. 

10. Be love. 'The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself. What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be. I have to be love.' (This quote just says it all perfectly).

11. You are a mirror. Like a different language, in order for you to communicate with anyone, you must have first learned the art of speaking with a new tongue. Similarly, in order for you to see the beauty in others, you must have first embodied that same beauty yourself. The good you find in others, is in you too. The faults you find in others, are your faults as well. After all, to recognise something you must know it. The possibilities you see in others, are possible for you as well. The beauty you see around you, is your beauty. The world around you is a reflection, a mirror showing you the person you are. (I have written more about this topic in my post You Are A Mirror).

12. Everything happens for a reason.

13. It's ok to be both. You are allowed to have whatever proportion of characteristics within yourself as you feel to be true. As humans, we may appear as a paradox of opposing beliefs, but that is the beauty of humanity, we are messy creatures. The different sides of us are not mutually exclusive but are rather intertwined as one to create the uniquely stunning people that we are. Like yin and yang, we are entities that need balance. We need both the peace in the wild and the wild within the peace. Allowing yourself to find a balance between the perhaps contradictory states within you rather than tip-toeing on a tightrope is what will help you find contentment and comfort in who you are rather than trying to fit into a specific idealised standard of who you believe you should be. 

14. You don't have to be pretty like her, you can be pretty like you. Just because she is pretty, that doesn't make your own beauty absent. Fairy lights are beautiful but so are feathers, yet their beauty is completely unique and different, they can not be compared; nor can you.

15. Change is the only constant. 

16. Kindness is the universal language of the world. 'Kindness what a simple way to tell another struggling soul that there is love to be found in this world'. A specific memory of true kindness and love will forever and ever be with me. One evening I felt so upset and I rang my mom crying. I was two hundred miles from home, tormented by my thoughts, lonely, hopeless and truly felt no longer able to continue to fight; all I wanted was for someone to take me away from all of the pain and fear. A stranger appeared like a guardian angel, she squeezed my hand and held a tissue to my eyes and then disappeared. I have tears in my eyes just thinking of this moment, it may sound like a small gesture but her kindness and compassion saved me that night. She was suffering too, she was a patient with all of her own issues, scars and battles yet in that moment she chose to remind me of our common humanity, our united suffering. I wish I could tell this woman how much her care meant to and still means to me. Thank you.

17. Everyone has a story. When you try to understand people and view their behaviour and actions through the eyes of love and compassion, you can then not only tolerate but forgive and send love to even the greatest of evils. Everyone has a story. Everyone has pain. We all do what we can to survive. Perhaps what one may do to get by in life may cause horrific pain, agony and suffering. While such hatred is horrible, when we transform that person who his tearing us apart into someone who is to be pitied and dealt with compassionately we can allow in peace and serenity to move on with our lives, to let go, forgive or focus on the beautiful positive people, things and memories we have and are yet to experience (I wrote a lot about this topic in my previous blogpost The Secret That Changed My Life).

18. The fear of suffering is often worse than the suffering itself.

19. To be vulnerable is to be brave, powerful, courageous. You have to open your hands if you want to be held. We all just want to feel connection, acceptance and love but how can we let someone touch our heart if we have built up impermeable walls around it? Vulnerability is terrifying, allowing ourselves to be seen as our true messy and unique selves is scary. Even finding the willingness to say 'I love you' first without any guarantee of a return is terrifying, however, such vulnerability is the only key that unlocks the gate to pure love and heavenly happiness. 'What happens when we open our hearts? We get better.'

20. Nobody can save you but yourself. It's up to you. I learned this after being discharged from my first admission; my favourite nurse held my hand as she said she was sorry for not being able to help me enough. She could see through the facades of fake happiness and knew I was falling hard and fast down the dark hole of relapse weeks before I had even left. Six months later when I met her on the corridors of the adult hospital she hugged me and kissed words upon my soul that were simultaneously earth shattering and liberating; 'You didn't choose to get this illness, but unfortunately and also fortunately Lauren, you are the only person who can choose to fight it and get better...it is all ultimately up to you'. 

21. We are all on our own journey. There are no set rules for life; no direct route, no perfect path, no clear map...just our inner compass gently guiding us in the direction of our highest good. We may find ourselves on the road less travelled, in the middle of a large open meadow. We could become immensely overwhelmed at the sight of the towering trees, the cacophony of the screeching crows and the smell of the wild evergreen. We could cry with fear over how scared we are, scream in anger at the world for placing us here and faint at the thought of all the different stony routes out of this clearing. Alternatively, we could pick up the budding yellow rose next to us and smile at its intricate beauty, laugh with the rhythm of the sweet sounding swallows and gaze in awe at the infinite, deep blue sky. The choice is ours, it’s just a matter of perspective. We may feel lost, scared and confused at our own life situations but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, in fact this feeling could be the very thing that will set you and I, both, free.