Encourage Yourself

I started writing another heart-wrenching blog post this morning, because in truth, my heart is aching something bad right now.  But, after I wrote all those words, tears streaming down my face, a huge lump in my throat, I wiped my face and took a deep breath, and deleted the whole post.  It doesn’t matter. Those words don’t matter.  Those thoughts don’t matter.  They don’t change anything.

But, what WILL change things, what does matter is filling my heart, my mind, and my soul with positive thoughts. Remembering my dreams and the things I want to do in my life, those things will fuel me. They won’t take the pain away, but they’ll help dry the tears and push me forward. 

What we put into our minds, what we listen to, what thoughts we entertain, form our thoughts and effect the things we do, the choices we make, the fears we let consume us.  I’m a rebel. I often act against those fears, in spite of them, face those things that scare me most.  I just wish the rest of the world did the same. I don’t allow the world to tell me how to feel, what to do, what is the right way to go.  The world has been wrong. It’s always wrong.  Listening to the thoughts of the world has hurt me more than I’ll ever be able to express. Cowards. The world is full of cowards.

Today is a new day. Yesterday is gone.  The sun has risen once again and I choose to live. I start a new phase at work today, and it seems a new phase in life. Even though my heart hurts something terrible, I choose to smile, I choose to focus on the positive, I choose to tell the world to go fuck itself and take its doubt, depression and double-minded desires with it. I don’t need its bullshit.  Instead I will fill it with beautiful words of encouragement.

“Don’t cry over the past, it’s gone. Don’t stress about the future, it hasn’t arrived. Live in the present moment, make it beautiful.”

“There are two ways of spreading light, be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

“So, take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.”

“A beautiful life begins with a beautiful mind.”

“Ships in the harbor are safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.”

We tell ourselves that we must do this, we must do that, we must love this way or think that way. It’s all bullshit.  EVERY moment of every day we have a choice, and in that moment NONE of the world’s bullshit matters.  Regardless of the shit I’ve had to deal with in the past, regardless of the shape my heart is in, regardless of how shattered I am… IN THE MOMENT… this moment is all that matters. The choices I make right now… to love, to not love, to hate, to forgive, to doubt, etc.  THAT is who I am. 

I choose ME.  For no one else will.

“What we are today is the result of our own past actions; whatever we wish to be in the future depends on our present actions; decide how you have to act now. We are responsible for what we are, whatever we wish ourselves to be. We have the power to make ourselves.”

We choose to believe. We choose not to believe. We choose to fight. We choose to run. We choose to love. We choose to hate. We choose to forgive.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s to fight. Fight for what’s right. Fight for what you believe in, what’s important to you. But most importantly, fight for the ones you love, and never forget to tell anyone how much they mean to you while they’re still alive.”

Someday, someone will believe I’m worth fighting for, too. That day’s not today, but someday.

“I want to be your favorite hello and your hardest goodbye.”

“If you think positively, sound becomes music, movement becomes dance, smile becomes laughter, mind becomes meditation, and life becomes a celebration.”

In the midst of pain, in the darkest moment of despair, hope still lives and love still remains. I’ll never apologize for loving. I’ll never regret taking the chance.  I’ll never look back on my life and say, ‘only if’. I have fallen. I have tasted rejection. I have hurt to the deepest part of my soul, but I have no regrets. I am a lot of things, but I’m not a coward. I’m a fool.

“Three simple rules in life.  1. If you do not go after what you want; you’ll never have it. 2. If you do not ask, the answer will always be No.  3.  If you do not step forward, you’ll always be in the same place.”

Waiting for something to happen. Waiting to heal. Waiting to love. Waiting to explore. Waiting to have an adventure. Waiting for success. Waiting for forgiveness. Waiting for dreams. Waiting for happiness.  Leaves only one thing… you waiting.  None of those things just finds you… you have to fight for each one of them. You have to choose them. You have to want them. You have to face your fears and take them.

Till next time,

Black-Eyed Beauty

Letting Go

Letting go isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be, or as easy as it sounds. Hell, it sounds so simple… you know, just open your hand and let it go. Elsa even understood it so much she sang a song about it. Holding on is hard. Holding on is scary. Holding on takes so much out of you; it breaks you down and pulls at the very center of who you really are. The way ‘letting go’ is made to sound so easy is like saying holding on is a bad thing. But is it, really? Isn’t holding on what makes a relationship work? Isn’t holding on what gets you ‘through’ the tough times in life? Hold on to the promises. Hold on to the hope. Hold on to faith. Hold on to love. Right? How come I feel like I’m the only one that ever ‘holds on’ to anything in my life? I’m sure that probably sounds like such a selfish and self-centered attitude, but I can’t help but feel the lump in my throat when I think about it, and feel the warm tears streak down my cheeks as I think of all those that found it so easy to let go… to let me go.

Yesterday, I was faced with the stark reminder that I’ve once again been left behind, forgotten, that life has moved on without me, that they have ‘let me go’ and are busy with their new life, without me. Yet, feeling the pain of it made it clear that I’m still holding on. The tears that flow this morning are tears from facing the reality that they’ve moved on. I suppose it’s time for me to do the same. It’s time for me to let go of the fairy tale that will never happen, the knight-in-shining armor moment that’s never coming. He’s got his Cinderella and I’m faced with the reality that I was just another faceless dancer at the ball; all dressed up, but didn’t quite possess the right shoes. Obviously, that wasn’t my fairy tale.

So, what do I do now? Let go? That’s easy to say, easy to think, easy to plan, but… what everyone fails to explain is ‘HOW’. How do I turn a part of my heart off? How do I stop dreaming? How do I stop hurting? How do I start to breathe again? I should know how to do this; I’ve done it so many times before. I should be an expert, or know how to write a how-to book on “letting go” and “starting over”. Yet, I know as much now as I knew every time before. I’m lost. I’m just lost. Nothing’s familiar in my life right now. For a few seconds in the mornings I forget I’m in a new town and separated from everything I love. I’m in a new job, and haven’t yet started back writing. I have everything I own and possess stuffed away in some storage unit, waiting to be reclaimed. That’s how my life feels: stored away just waiting to be reclaimed.

I have to let go, I have no choice. Those decisions were made without me. I may have been the one who moved away, but they left me long before that. The tears this morning remind me I’m still holding on, but there’s nothing in my hands except broken pieces of myself. Was it worth it? Is the pain I feel now worth the joy I felt while falling in love? Yes. I loved falling in love. It was scary, but exciting. For just a little while, I was the princess at the ball in the beautiful gown, and it was me with whom he was dancing. I felt the magic. The music moved me. Everything about it was beautiful. He was beautiful. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I dare dress up and attend another ball, but before I do I have to somehow “let go” of this particular fairy tale. Elsa, help me. My friends, please just hold me close and very tight. I love you all very much, and it’ll be your love that helps me find my magic again.

Till next time,



~T.L. Gray

Falling Out of Love

Is this really possible? Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve experienced it on both sides of the coin, am experiencing a form of it now, and yet I still don’t understand how such a thing can really occur.

It’s easy to get angry at the opposite end of a love affair falling apart. We are beings that change, adapt, evolve and go through several metamorphosis on a constant basis. There’s no such person that always ‘stays the same’. Yet, as much as we change we are also creatures of habit.

I think the part that hurts most in a Falling Out of Love experience is the change that occurs when the habits, especially the habits that made us most happy, are the ones that change. I.e. – Simply saying ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’… and having that suddenly or slowly stop. I had a friend and it drove him crazy with me simply sending him a good morning and good night text every day. He never understood that it was my way of saying to him that he was important to me… that I thought about him in my early morning thoughts, wished him well through the day, and then as I meditated before I fell asleep he was a part of those thoughts as well. But because my habits bothered him, I stopped (mostly)… and with it… I stopped thinking about him so much. Days sometimes go by where I barely think of them at all, or mention his name, or concern myself with his well-being. I miss him terribly, but I don’t want to bother him either. The daily wishes… were more for me than for him. I’ve been forgotten, left behind, and abandoned a lot… and I never wanted anyone I care about to ever feel that from me. So, I try to keep the ones I care about most fresh in my thoughts. Yet, I still sometimes find myself reluctant to send a simple, “good morning” thinking I’m bothering them.

When you’re in a relationship, regardless of the type of relationship, we develop habits on how we relate to one another. Those tend to be the first things that change when the relationship changes. It’s always small changes, a slow pulling away, that happens when a relationship is fading out. Those are painful if you are observant enough to see them. The absence of these habits produces emotional holes. If you are used to communicating with someone every day, consistently, and they suddenly stop or those communications get farther apart, it hurts. It hurts because you know the embers are dying and unless the coals are flamed, they will fizzle.

This is where my stubbornness hurts me most. If I feel someone withdrawing from me, I slam up my walls preparing myself for the pain I know is coming. I should be pumping air onto those smoldering coals, but instead I withdraw further away. I run… emotionally and physically.

I’m not saying that’s the thing to do. On the contrary… that’s the thing NOT to do. I’ve never saved a relationship by walking away or letting them walk away. But, it’s one of my triggers. It’s one of my self-preservation psychotic moves. Just because I will stand back and allow people to walk away from me, doesn’t mean I don’t care or that it doesn’t hurt. It hurts. It hurts a lot. I still have holes where people have walked away from me and I let them go. But it doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving them. How is that even possible? For me, I have truly loved them all, and in some ways still do. What died was the relationship, the communication, the connection, but the beautiful things I loved about them are still there. Perhaps it’s just me because it sure seems they stopped loving me. I don’t think any of my exes hate me, but did they ever really love me? Do they think fondly of me on those rare moments I brush across their thoughts? Who knows.. it doesn’t matter because they’re not here now. They walked away or else let me walk away. I had friends I thought would be in my life forever that are nowhere to be found. I had lovers who I couldn’t imagine my life without. Yet, here I am today alone, yet still breathing, still living, still existing, just not in their world.

So, did the love just fall away? Did it just stop? Or just the effort to fight for it? Will I ever be worth fighting for in someone’s life? To maintain a relationship with me, they’ll have to fight for me, because I won’t stop them if they ever chose to leave. Watching them leave is the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, because I’m helpless to stop, to change, to save the fall. I’ll never be where I’m not wanted. Never. Being in a relationship like that doesn’t just hurt emotionally, it kills the soul.

I don’t the answer. I don’t know if falling out of love is possible, but falling out of habit is very much real.

Till next time,



~T.L. Gray