Struggling into no answers

Sometimes when just when you think life is going swimmingly and you’re moving forward well, something happens that knocks you back a peg or a whole row of them. It sucks when that happens and it seems pain is your only friend, one you were hoping you wouldn’t see anytime soon.

Sometimes it’s hard to trust the future when you get knocked back because it seems like an endless battle against an invisible force that just doesn’t seem to want you to get past something, especially when you think you’re the only one who truly cares and tries.

That fog that surrounds you makes it hard to see ahead, much less find clarity around you when you’re seeking answers because there’s a lesson in everything. Sometimes you’re thinking, dammit, where’s the frickin’ lesson in all this in the first place? I do my best, I try hard, I give my heart and soul.

Sometimes the hardest struggle is when there’s no answers, there’s no light shining the way out for you. It’s when you feel truly alone, even when you’ve got an array of friends and family around you, because it’s something you have to find for yourself. You literally have to create answers out of nothing, or at least blindly stumble forward somehow, trying to find them and the way out.

It’s funny, almost always in hindsight when we look back on these sort of situations we see that the answer was much more obvious than we thought or we get whatever was needed that we couldn’t see through all the fog and pain deadening our processes.

As counterproductive it may seem or even a waste, sometimes the whole point of struggling is just that — to struggle. Because during times like these, especially when we look back, it’s through that painful growth that we become stronger and we discover something new about ourselves.

Gnarled tree at Paynes Prairie, Gainesville, Florida