This Is How You Stay Afloat

Naturally, you get in way too deep at first. You want to live in the moment, savour every lasting second of it, give your all because you don’t know how long this will last.

How do you know if you can be this happy again? You don’t. So, you do what you got to do.

But here’s the thing you will never know until it’s too late — you’re so busy chasing after someone else’s dreams, for them, that you forgot you have some yourself too. And when you wake up from this nightmare, it will feel like coming up for air after holding your breath underwater for too long. It will feel like the part where you say, “I love you, but I can’t stay,” and walk away from something or someone that has been hurting you.

You will begin to feel blood rushing through your veins again. You will realise how blue the sky actually is because you start paying attention to everything around you. You will begin to listen to your heart, your intuitions, and you will know what feels right. You will find out who you can be without chasing after dreams that are not yours because they don’t define who you are. That is when clarity hits, the moment the storm passes, and walking out that door never felt so right.

Make no mistake that this is just the beginning. Maybe where you are right now is at the bottom of the pit, but it only marks the beginning of an uprising, a roar in the silence, a bolt of thunder that strikes the sky. We all start somewhere.

And when you choose to not be reduced by what has happened to you, you remember those events as living stories. On days when you are feeling nostalgic, retrieve them where they are stored at the back of your mind. You look back and smile at what has happened, but you wouldn’t want to change how things would turn out. Sometimes looking back at a story or two will have you choking back tears and longing to go back to relive the moment, but when you finally come to your senses, you wouldn’t wish for things to be better than they were. You won’t be homesick for a place that no longer exist.

Take comfort in knowing that these thoughts about being better, wanting to do more for yourself, seeking for something to believe in again — they are signs of rising strong.

This is how you stay afloat.