When it rains, it pours...

When it rains, it pours; and today the sky is black with clouds and the rain is pounding its way down.

In the past 48 hours, my life has gone from the life that I know to a new territory I'm terribly unfamiliar with. My family is falling apart, my education and vast professional experience can't get me the jobs I want, and my body has stopped communicating with me. I cannot remember the last time I felt so ineffective, incapable, and inadequate.

These emotions manifest themselves into pain. I am fighting off my desire to cry, because history proves that it won't do me any good to let my tears fall. I'll let the storm outside do that for me.

But when this storm passes, and the sun comes out to shine, where does that leave me?

It leaves me with a better light to see.

I can only reason that these events in my life (or lack thereof) have left me so down because I approached them with great hopes. How else can can a person fall to the floor, unless they were looking up.

My family is one that is founded upon secrecy, borne of lack of trust, communication, and respect. I had always hoped that this would change; always believing that maybe, just maybe, if I changed, they would too; as if leading by example could make a difference. Someday I will learn that some people just don't change; or more specifically, perhaps I'm just not that person who could have such an influence.

The jobs I've reached out to are all ones that I am fully qualified for, and every resume I send I am hopeful that this is the one that'll take me. But they don't. Does this mean that my life of travel, my good education, and my work experience amounts to nothing? My bank account suggests it's so. Perhaps I am not the qualified person I thought I was. Perhaps I have just been aiming too high.

My body has never been dependable. My sleeping habits change from week to week, my skin has a life of its own, and never have I been able to predict my next period. For the first time in my life however, everything changed this past summer, and my body fell into a rhythm that I welcomed wholeheartedly. But now it's back to the way it was. I am staying up far later than I have in months, my skin is a daily challenge, and who knows the next time I'll need to use my female supplies. Perhaps I believed too strongly that things were finally falling into a place that I needed and wanted them to be.

My hope in my approaches to these things comes from my undying optimism. To lose this hope would be to admit defeat. Why must life test us so? Why does my optimism come under such attack?

Unfortunately for life, I am a fighter. I will not let these things get the better of me.

If my family cannot resolve their issues, I am still me.
If the job of my dreams will not hire me, I am still me.
If my body wants to do its own thing, I am still me.

I will be me no matter what people think, say, or do. That is my strength in life. No matter how hard this rain falls, no matter how hard the thunder clashes, no matter how blinding the lightening may be, I am me, and I always carry an umbrella.