It's Hard to be Okay,

“There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love 

I'm on an Elizabeth Gilbert kick lately. I have yet to read Eat,Pray, Love, due to lack of extraneous funds, but I WANT IT SO BAD. In the meantime, I've been pouring over a lot of her quotations. One of my favorite things about this woman is her undeniable recognition of her own failings. In all of her quotes she is constantly talking about how hard it is to just be okay sometimes. But what makes her so inspirational to me is how she goes on to talk to herself about why she's not okay, what she's trying to do to fix it, and how she sometimes just really screws it up all alone.

This passage is one of my favorites at the moment. It's long, bear with me...

 “So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together.
In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page:

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Perhaps one of my most difficult struggles is not allowing my horrible days, my bad moods, my pains, to bleed over into the rest of my life. Hurting people hurt others. It's incredibly challenging to not take your anger, your frustration out on others. But what can we do? Its easier said than done, but perhaps, to take a page from Elizabeth's book, we should lend a hand of friendship to ourselves.

It can feel silly sometimes to think of ourselves as our own friend, but we have to be. Just as your relationships with others, family, lovers, friends, need lots of time and tending, so do our own relationships with ourselves. We must learn to recognize when we have pain and to address it so it doesn't take over our lives. Just as venting to a friend about a bad day can really help, talking to yourself, or journaling, can help us self-identify and deal with what is holding us back.

Loneliness is a plague. As Mother Teresa said, "the hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." Some days it seems impossible to fill up our own love meters, but it begins within.  

“You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert 

It's a TGIF kind of day, so I'll leave you with a funny to help get through these last few hours 'till the weekend...