First You Have To Believe In It

There’s a little cat that we’ve cared for for the last fifteen years. She recently took a turn for the worse. Hair matted, skinny as a skeleton. We’ve never been able to touch her until this past Christmas. Because she didn’t know petting was something she’d like and had been missing. You can’t want what you don’t know exists.

There was a time when I didn’t believe in happiness. It was something from fluffy fairy tales. I had been miserable for so long, it just made sense that happiness was a luxury that other people enjoyed. I believed happiness just wasn’t for me. But what I really knew was that I wasn’t entitled to it.

In order to live a life you want, or think you want, you have to believe in its existence first. Or first believe you’re deserving of it to live it. That you’re worthy of enjoying the state of happiness or hope or health, to then create the circumstances to live it.

You think people who are living happy lives are full of crap when you’re depressed, in the middle of a bad choice that you feel you can’t unchoose (marriage or job or residence), and when life is doing bad things to you. You don’t know what kind of sick cruel game they’re playing but you’re not playing it with them. Hope is for suckers.

It takes truly believing that you can create and are entitled to have a life you’ve never lived before. It takes faith. You need to believe in the possibility. You need to believe that you may be worth it and are capable of achieving it. You need to put yourself into the future and feel what that would be like. Feel As If The Thing Has Happened.

Only then do you begin to search for the pieces to bridge the gap. You look for your future self in other people. In how they see you and what you see of yourself in them. You look out into the world for what excites you. You look for identities and groups, passions, colors and movements. And you say Yes it’s possible.

Slowly I’ve filled in the gaps, like I’m building an invisible puzzle of myself, my possibilities are emerging. Slowly. So very slowly.

Every picture challenge I joined and commented on in Instagram, I gained friends and confidence. Every time I made art and showed it to others, I found out who I was in others eyes and in my own. This February Bootcamp is me showing up for myself and saying it’s possible to art every day and my life is immensely better for that devotion.

Every time I wrote what I thought, I found out what I believed. About myself and about the world I lived in. How I perceived the people around me and my chances to be happy and hopeful grew. I grew outward, larger in my thoughts. I reinforced my boundaries, I clarified my strengths. I used my talents and again and again as proof that I had them.

From these endeavors, I am emerging as from a vapor, a mist, into a person who I believe has a larger purpose. A person who has talents to share. And it all started first with the belief in the possibilities. The why is that I want to really live my life. The how is that I work on my vision of myself, of the world, on a daily basis. And construct the belief that there is a happy life just in front of me for the taking. I only need see it. And step into it.

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And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.