Redirection

23 was a year of survival mode- confusion, betrayal, hurting, crying, nothing working out how I planned. Survival mode feels like drowning. Never being able to get enough air, never being able to fully breathe. Survival mode feels like a hard workout and you’re gasping for air and reaching for your water bottle after finishing you’re set. You’re trying to chug down your water, but need to take breaks in between each chug in order to breathe. That’s survival mode.

How can you be alive and breathing, but not actually breathing? How do you wake up over and over and over again and you’re not actually alive? Why does it feel like I wasted a whole year of my life trying to just breathe again? I kept reaching for the water bottle trying to push away how mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted I was, but I just needed to recover. I was begging please, God, just give me a longer recovery.

But God, the Universe, Life has a funny way of making us learn lessons. They set a weight on my chest and kept piling them up and up and up: how heavy can it get? When will she gain the strength to take one off? When will she deal with her shit? It took me a long time to figure it out, to deal with it all. To stop running away from the hurt, pain, resentment, anger, and disgust in the cards life dealt to me. Instead of giving them a good look, studying them, finding the next move- I set them down completely and looked for a new dealer with new cards.

FYI: you don’t get new cards.

There’s beauty in the struggle. It’s blinding and difficult to see when you’re in the trenches of it. But once you’re out of the struggle, once the weights are taken off your chest, when you can finally take that deep, beautiful breath again. That’s when you see the lesson, that’s when you find purpose in your pain. That’s when you see how the weights that were holding you down have strengthened you.

23 was a year of survival mode, yes. It hurt, I cried, I felt alone, I felt betrayed, I cried more, and I questioned why everything bad was happening to me. Why ME? Why can’t I catch a break? Life wasn’t happening to me, it was happening for me. Instead of running from my pain, one day I just looked it dead in the face and sat with it. Made room for it next to me, allowed it to make me uncomfortable (not kidding, I think I cried every day of March). Life wasn’t teaching me how bad life can get, life was teaching me how to deal with how hard life gets. How to find beauty and lessons in the hard. Without hard, there can never be easy. Without bad, there can never be good.

I’m still healing and relearning how to breathe, I still have a ways to go. And I think life was trying to tell me, “Hey Taylar, learn how to fucking breathe through the bad. Time keeps going, don’t allow a year of your life to pass by”.

Here’s my response: I HEAR YOU.

The cards you’re dealt may not always be a winning hand. But when there’s loss, there’s gain. Without losing, we can never know what a win feels like. I’m grateful for my losing hand.

There’s beauty in the redirection. And for a long time I told myself that over and over again. I don’t think I necessarily believed it for myself. I knew it was true, but was just waiting for the beauty… OKAY LIFE, WHEN DOES IT GET BETTER… WHERE’S THE BEAUTY? But life isn’t about waiting. You have to make it better for yourself because time DOES keep going. One day I thought about all the beautiful things I want my life to embody. I decided to act on it. My redirection taught me I have a beautiful life to attend to and make shit happen for. The redirection is The Universe guiding you into something more beautiful and genuine for your life. Even if it is a messy lesson that took you a year to realize.

Thank you 23, I appreciate you. You taught me the greatest lessons of my life. 24, I can’t wait. A year of creating, living in the present, making shit happen, and embracing the cards life hands me.