It's a Brutiful Life...

I recently acknowledged my one year "back-to-work-iversary" after two years off after a deep dive into depression and anxiety--hospital stays--support groups, medication and therapy.  To borrow a word from Glennon Doyle Melton, it is Brutiful.  

It is Beautiful.  Tender, raw and vulnerable, falling forward into blinding fear and self-love --where everyone is doing the best that they can---really.  Undone by the spectre of judgement and perfectionism no more.

Brutal.  Tender, raw and vulnerable, falling backward into blinding fear and self-doubt -- where everyone is doing the best that they can? ---really?  Undone by the spectre of judgement and perfectionism! No more....

It is the flip side of the same coin and each day is a new toss.

I have been favoured with more Beautiful than Brutal.  

Life is Brutiful

But...

Brutal stalks my peripheral, winking, as I cast a furtive glance over my shoulder, my feet pounding the ground of what feels more and more like a treadmill to nowhere.  

Each day I face Brutal...head on and come out bruised and battered, my focus turns to the race, to avoiding a misstep as I navigate familiar old terrain that I had hoped was far behind me.  And Beautiful, that surrounds me, is lost to paranoia as I dare not falter in my mad dash to stay afoot.

To be sucked under again is terrifying.  Even knowing, as I do, that the strength and power are within me to rise again....I lower my head, lean in and double my efforts, feeling Brutal's stench so close in pursuit.

And then it happens...

It is brutal's day and you go down.

And you have no words.

You are exhausted.

And you feel like all that you have done is nothing.  You can't get to nowhere, you are already there.  You are nowhere and no one.  

But the secret is, that Beautiful is all around you.  But your eyes are closed to it and it's ok to give in to that BRUTAL day.  It's ok to have let Brutal win.

Because life is Brutiful.  Life can only be Beautiful if it is Brutal. and life can only be Brutal if it is likewise Beautiful.  

So today, I am grateful for Brutal.  

I will embrace brutal and let it wash over me.  I will lean into it and accept today I have fallen and am beat up and can see nothing besides darkness.  

Because so far, in my whole life, I have seen that light ALWAYS follows darkness.  Each having its time.  One for rest and one for growth.  One to shine and one to reflect.  

And like the ebb and flow, my life follows.  

I am...a Work in Progress.