Constantly Having to Get Back on the Horse

 Resilience.

It's what some of us have to be our whole lives. We're constantly kicked off the horse, we have to wipe the sand off our pants and wiggle out the bruises from our impact down. It's not easy getting back up and sometimes it is just our pride that gets in the way that makes it so hard.

I feel like sometimes I'm in a rotation of a few days between having to get back on the horse, sometimes it feels like every morning with my chronic pain and fatigue. 

It honestly feels as if I'm no more closer to the goal based on the amount of times I have to keep getting back up. I just want rest from exhausting myself out, meanwhile the horse (the dream) is still wanting to continue on and I find myself chasing after the horse as it's going ahead. I feel lost on time, like it's whizzing by and the dream is further from my clutches. 

I don't believe in keeping face for positivity's sake. How this society is structured is not meant for people like me: chronically ill and neurodivergent. I sometimes just want to give up and refuse to go into work by how my body is being brutalized by working full-time when most with my condition can't.

There was a time where I was in a wheelchair and it scares me if I were to go back to that reality. It scares me how so many of us are just a few missed paychecks from being on the street with no social safety net in place. 

But still I grit my teeth and I rise in the morning. I shouldn't have to but I have no other option. I am still pushing for joy in my daily life, despite how fast they whiz past. I feel like I am living for the weekend yet I try to make the most of them and feel like a wizard trying to freeze time.

I mix all the pain and the hope and charge forward towards the things that light me up in the dark. It's understanding my darkness, my shadow self, and the reality of what I live in, but not giving into to hopelessness, recognizing the roadblocks that are in the way and coming up with alternative routes. 

I am not ready to despair despite everything and I will cling to this, even if I am in a sinking ship.

Hope in a Fragile World

It seems to me I am fighting for hope on a daily level. There are hills and valleys throughout the day of the range of my fears and emotions. It can be predicted by the media I consume or the events of my day. It is always wavering- yet there is always a guarantee of hope.

I often must remind myself of the hope, especially in a world that is focused on the clicks and views of desperation and fear. A world that does not want you to consume and be consumed by art. A world that would rather you dig through the mud and bury your art. That does not seek you to love but chase after things out of greed.

I did a rebirthing ritual last year that turned my world upside down. I made a sigil and ended up getting that symbol tattooed on myself. Because I wasn't just rebirthed simply one time, it is a daily occurrence. It happens when I finish a book. I am not the same woman after having a conversation with a friend. Or watching a sunset. 

And like being rebirthed, our hope can be re-sparked. It is a daily fire we must tend to. Every single article of chaos and destruction douses the fire, but every time we laugh can flick the flames back to life. 

Hope does not mean we do not struggle. It simply means we have something to keep our eye on as we are fighting. It gives us reason to fight in the first place. The fire warms us, heals us. 

The destruction wins when we give is. When we let it extinguish our flame and we wallow in the misery of life. Daily we must get back up after life has knocked us down. Hope is not something we wait for, but simply something we choose. 

We choose it by smiling at nature around us, by taking out our paint brushes, by surrounding us with other people who have chosen to tend to their fires. 

So today, tend to your fire.