Holding Onto Pearls.

People who wonder if the glass is half full or half empty miss the point.

The glass is refillable.

That is the point.

We all have something we hold onto.

At least one thing we don’t want to entertain losing.

Even the thought of slightly loosening our grip can send us into a state of confusion and anxiety.

But what if I told you, when you let it go, it comes back to you?

Inevitably, every empty thing will be filled.

Again and again and again.

One of the fine arts of life is learning to be content while we are full, content while we are empty, and content while we are being filled.

Because sometimes, we need to be emptied.

Or there is no capacity to be filled.

It’s like when you find a pearl.

It’s a fake pearl, but you don’t care.

It’s YOUR pearl, and that’s what matters.

You treat it as if it’s real, showing it off to whoever will look.

But deep down, you know it isn’t real.

And you almost don’t care.

Part of you would rather have this thing which looks and almost even feels like a pearl than have an actual pearl.

Because having an actual pearl would mean you would have to give up your fake pearl.

It would mean being empty handed for a little while.

It would mean trusting that everything which is emptied is then filled again.

And that’s difficult.

We don’t want to be empty, even if just for a while.

Especially when we can’t quite describe what it is that’s compelling us to see the possibility of a different ending.

Even if it means letting go of something good for something great.

Too many people hold onto their fake pearls their entire lives, not daring to set down what is good so they are able to hold what is great.

But as hard as I might try to ignore that small (sometimes colossal) tug to set down these often beautiful replicas of something truly majestic, I simply can’t.

And that honestly sucks sometimes.

I don’t want to be empty handed.

I don’t want to feel the weight of something missing.

I don’t want to yearn for a wholeness I’ve yet to experience.

But I do.

And as much as I wish I could, I can’t just be like those people who cradle the good things, ignoring the possibility of something great.

Sometimes, this makes me feel defective.

Why can’t I just accept what other people accept?

But one thing I’ve come to see is that every time I’ve let something good go when I didn’t want to but knew it was time to, something else has come along.

And I have faith that eventually what comes along will be great.

And it will finally be mine to hold.

At least for a while.

Shards and Pieces.

“Sometimes, you have to self-destruct in order to self-discover, and understand that the only person you have to let go… is you.”

R.M. Drake

Wow.

Like really, wow.

How many times do we have to hear that before we’ll actually give into it?

If we’re being brutally, magically honest with ourselves, we are unequivocally terrified to examine the fragments of thread holding ourselves together.

I may not be particularly old.

I may not be particularly wise.

But in my short time on this planet, I’ve observed something which seems to govern the entire human condition:

If you desire to live life to the maximum capacity, you must lose it.

And I don’t mean you need to end your life or crumble up all your idiosyncrasies and cast them into the winds.

But you truly must be willing to (and actually, at times) tear off pieces of who you’ve always thought you are and smash them on the ground.

Then, you must purge your mind of these preconceived notions of who you’re “supposed to be” and never look back at the shards.

Because who you think you’re supposed to be and who you are will almost always differ.

And that’s okay.

But I think it’s difficult for us to see this.

Because we’ve drown our own beauty in the well-wishes of others, in the contradictory expectations of those who claim to love us and those who claim to own us.

We’ve allowed their visions for our lives to wash in and {often} overtake our own visions.

While the visions of others may not be inherently bad and may not even be intentionally selfish, they are.

They are given one life, just as you are, just as I am.

And except for rare instances, it is not their job to see for someone else.

Which means, they have no right to cast their wishes for your life onto you, no matter how well intentioned they may be.

I say all this to say: perhaps it is time.

Time to look at those threads holding your dreams together.

To look at the expectations you have for yourself.

The dreams, the fears, the things which make you feel despair, anger, guilt, pride, joy.

And look them in both eyes with unveiled sight, proclaiming what they truthfully are.

Because if they’re your dreams, your guidelines, your messiness, that’s perfectly wonderful.

But if they’re someone else’s restrictions, someone else’s dreams, someone else’s messes you continue to clean, you need to stop.

You need to find your own sight.

Your eyes are your own.

Use them.

When you do, you empower others to do the same.

And you discover that the pieces you are required to lose in this process were never really meant to fit into your skin to begin with. 

Lighting the Dark.

You open your eyes, but all you see is the dark.

The air gradually becomes thicker, as your lungs struggle to expand.

There is soot in the air, coating your skin thicker with each toxic breath.

You begin to grasp at the darkness around you only to find you’re encapsulated.

Walls surround you.

There are no doors.

There are no foot holes.

There are no windows.

There is only deepest dark and loneliest alone.

How did you get here?

You used to see light. 

There were once steps lining this space, allowing you to come and go as you pleased.

Then, the air was clean, fragrant, even.

You had friends.

People who would bring joy to your small area, light lights, open curtains, feast on laughter.

But all of that’s gone.

You begin to cry.

A few tears trickle into giant, ugly sobs.

And the echoes drown out the heartbeat you’ve long ago forgotten is your own.

You sob until you are numb.

Until you no longer see the dark or attempt to climb out of your trap.

You lie down in the puddle of tears you’ve just created. 

When you finally stand up, drained of the last sliver of humanity you had, you think strongly about sitting back down and dying.

It would be a slow death, but it would be a death tens of thousands before you have accepted.

But something inside that darkness is telling you to stand on your tip-toes.

When you do, you push your hand up and touch the top of what’s containing you.

The faintest gleam of hope stirs in you.

Your eyes widen.

You now take both hands and feel the ceiling above.

Before you even have time to think about it, you’re pushing up with some form of strength you didn’t remember you had, throwing away the piece that just held you captive for longer than you care to remember.

And then you see hands.

Hundreds of hands, reaching out to you, to pull you from your pit.

Once you’re out of the ground, you remember how you got there.

You built that pit. 

Even surrounded by all these outstretched hands, you dug yourself a nice little hole, jumped in, and pulled a lid over your hiding spot.

So no one would find you.

--------------------

Friends.

This is what life is like when we do not allow people in.

Before I allowed people into my thoughts, into what I thought were such dark places no one would survive even a small glimpse, I felt a lot like what I described above.

I didn’t remember how I’d gotten to that place, but I knew I hadn’t always been there.

I knew I didn’t want to stay, but I felt like there was no way out.

And that’s how darkness wants us to feel.

Like, sure, we may have had something good before, but now, we’re in the dark, and we had better learn to like it, since there’s no way out.

But I promise you, that’s a lie.

There’s a way out. 

Sharing the precious things on our minds and in our hearts can be difficult.

Feelings of shame, embarrassment, and fear of what another may think often keeps us backed into our own self-made caves, cowering in and clinging to the darkness.

But you know what?

All of us have a few of those caves.

And I wonder what would happen if we got brave and brought a friend to our secret spots?

I think we would be more likely to look at each other and remember that we’re all fighting our own battles, every single day.

And we all just need someone to come in, see our darkness, give us a giant hug, and help us open our curtains. 

Crusade.

Something struck me this morning.

I’ve been paying attention to some of the recent news stories about the bombings around the world.

Someone commented about how we were 700+ years past the crusades.

(I did not fact check this number, but the actual number is fairly moot.)

And I get what he was trying to say.

He feels like we’ve evolved as a species, gotten to and settled at a point where we must be beyond such childish, ignorant behavior as to blow ourselves up and take lives with us because we have some minor disagreements.

It would be nice to be able to commend that point of view.

But it’s a lie.

Even the kindest, most moral people have traces of death in their hearts.

And we want to say we’ve evolved past this, but truly, we’ve spent thousands of years improving the ways we do things, not necessarily doing new things.

Sure, we can mass produce food, communicate to someone halfway across the world in seconds, and drive thirty miles in thirty minutes.

We can save more lives with our advances in technology, plan for the future, and effectively kill large amounts of people in seconds.

Have our needs evolved?

Have our basic desires changed?

Absolutely, they haven’t.

We are now simply able to fulfill said needs and desires “better.”

So, who’s to say our hearts, our minds have evolved past any point?

Especially on a global scale.

That’s ignorant, at best. Arrogant, even.

There are still millions (perhaps billions) of people living in circumstances where they are daily denied education, adequate nutrition, protective shelter, even clean water.

People who are never taught that bombing someone when they take your milk money is not the answer.

People who are encouraged to die so they take up less resources.

People who don’t understand they have a life, and that life is worth living.

So.

Have we “evolved” past our intellectual ignorance of the crusading days?

I don’t believe so.

We’ve only gotten more adept at hiding our motives and quickly fulfilling our desires.

We are all still undeniably, one thousand percent human.

Why I'm Legally Changing My First Name

I don’t necessarily expect anyone to understand this.

And if you don’t, I understand why.

Seriously, who, aside from victims trying to hide from assailants, legally changes their first name as an adult?

Apparently, I do.

I’m twenty-four years old.

I just submitted my petition for legal name change.

And it feels so freeing.

For as long as I can remember, I haven’t liked my name.

Not because it’s a bad name; it’s really not.

I’ve just never felt it suited me.

And the older I’ve gotten, the more my heart has felt it.

I felt weird introducing myself with a name which felt so different from who I was.

Right after high school, I moved to Texas for two years.

I thought about changing my name when I got there, but I chickened out.

I wasn’t sure what I would change it to, anyway.

But when I came back, I knew it was time to make a change.

In my freshman English comp class, I introduced myself as “Bri” for the first time.

I needed a place to test the waters, and that seemed like as good as any.

Guess what?

They didn’t think I was a fraud.

And it felt really good to go by a name I actually didn’t cringe at when I said it.

When I transferred into nursing school, I knew some faculty members, and it was a very small school.

I got nervous about how they would respond; so, I didn’t fully embrace the change while in school.

But I did in other places, like my gym, church, and [eventually] work communities.

And I got to a point where more people I regularly interacted with didn’t know my “real” first name than those who did.

But that’s all just surface stuff.

The real, raw, deep reason I’m changing my name is I feel like God has called me out of the deepest darkness and has taken me through an incredible metamorphosis.

I’m so very different from who I was ten years ago, five years ago.

Even from who I was six months ago.

And I feel it’s time to take that transformation and reflect it with a properly renovated name.

It’s like when God changed the character of Saul, the killer of Christians, and gave him a new name and identity in the name of Paul, which means small or humble.

It’s like when God made a promise to Abram, thus changing his name to Abraham, meaning the father of all nations.

It’s like when God called Simon, which means God has heard, to Peter, which means rock or stone.

God changed their names, and the names of many others, to reflect their true identities.

And I feel like he’s done the same for me.

It just took me a few years to really admit it.

And I feel like I need to embrace this gift by shrugging off the old skin of the dead man whom I used to live in and embracing the new life that I now live.

By making the change legal.

So, pending the approval of my petition, my name will now legally be “Brielle.”

Brielle is shorthand for Gabrielle.

It means “woman of God” in Hebrew.

I’m not going to make anyone who’s known me for a long time feel bad for not referring to me as Bri or Brielle.

But do know that, regardless of how stupid or crazy you may or may not think I am, this is name that I’ve chosen to embrace.

Please let me introduce myself as such.

Yours truly,

Brielle

Ceremonials.

The time is here.

I'm finally graduating from nursing school.

It seems like it's been such a long time, but in reality, it's been just the right amount.

I never used to understand why graduation ceremonies were a big deal. 

Truly, I'm still not sure I totally get it.

But this morning as I was driving, I think I finally get it.

It's not so much a celebration of accomplishment, though that is also true, it's closure.

In high school, I didn't really get that.

I actually didn't see the point in going to my high school graduation and opted out of the ceremony.

I think I was simply over the whole thing, and it really wasn't a challenge for me. 

One day I was there, the next I was moving on. 

No big deal.

However, this week, after I took my last finals, I didn't know what to do.

I really didn't have to do anything.

I've spent the last nearly three years on a very rigorous schedule, namely the last two, and all the sudden, it's just over.

It doesn't seem real.

But I think after graduation tomorrow evening, it will.

And I actually want to go to this ceremony.

Partially because there's a total of 17 of us graduating. 

These are women I've sweat and cried with, who've poured out their souls for this, who possess true compassion and seek to provide excellent care for their patients. 

I respect these women, and it really is a big deal we've all completed this.

I can't tell you the amount of times I contemplated quitting or thought I would fail out.

I know the same is true for them.

So, I find myself incredibly more thankful for this seemingly silly ceremony than I ever thought I would.

Because I, along with these 16 other beautifully crafted women, completed a task worthy of recognition and worthy of proper closure. 

I expect the full wave of relief to wash over us tomorrow as we grace that very mundane stage to do what millions of other former students will be doing in the next few weeks.

Though, however mundane the actually act may be, we will make it special, if only to us. 

The only feeling that will trump this is passing the NCLEX, but that will come soon enough. 

New Beginnings.

As I was walking to get coffee this morning in a brand new city, I was thinking about how exciting new places can be. 

This place is beautiful.

It's saturated with historical milestones.

The buildings are beautiful.

And the roads are slightly haphazard due to being constructed during the pre-city planning era.

I pulled up maps on my phone, looked at reviews, and chose a place which looked relatively close and decent. My friend told me a shortcut, which I used with the map, and I made it there without hitches, got my coffee, and proceeded to walk back to my friend's apartment. 

On the way back, I didn't use the map.

As I approached near where I was going, I started down the final path I thought would lead me to the large parking lot surrounded by apartment buildings. 

But there was a moment I paused.

Something didn't seem right.

Was this really the same path I walked down at the beginning? 

I was so sure it was right at first. It was just west of the old cottage. 

I remembered the fence that cut through the buildings.

 It had to be right.

I nearly turned around.

But for some reason, I didn't.

Now, I realize, so far, this is just a mundane story about my walk.

But hang with me.

I didn't turn around, and a moment later, I took a turn on the path I recognized.

I was on the right path. 

Had I turned around, it would've been just before I found the place I needed to be.

And I think this speaks so much to our lives.

We are certain we need to do something.

We start doing it.

It's exhilarating.

New.

Beautiful.

Fulfilling.

Then we come to a point where the path looks unfamiliar.

We wonder if we were actually supposed to do this thing in the first place, the one we were certain about to the core of who we are.

And I wonder... 

How many of us are actually frightened enough by that uncertainty to turn away? 

What if that uncertainty was really just the moment before something big was about to happen?

What if it was the moment right before you found your niche? 

What if you turned away just before you made it?

Now, clearly, there are times when we all make the wrong decision, and we really should turn around.

But this morning was a good reminder to check myself.

To remember, sometimes, new paths, though exhilarating, are scary. 

They require gull, poise, and going just a little further. 

Don't give up, just yet.

Whirlwinds.

Loneliness.

Oh, how you’ve been a friend to me.

Thankfully, one I’ve seen less and less these last few years.

But you’ve got me perplexed.

How is it we are so far from each other one moment, yet so close another?

I think I’ve found the reason:

We want to be close.

It may be difficult to believe, but I’m truly beginning to think the root of isolation begins within.

 Clearly, we don’t sit around thinking about how much we can’t wait to feel lonely.

We don’t sit around dreaming of feeling isolated and unloved.

However, we certainly tend to believe we’re screw-ups.

That we’re hard to love.

That if we mess up just one more time….

Which is why I’m suggesting, maybe that old adage, “It’s not you, it’s me,” one thousand percent applies to this.

Recently, I’ve been privy to experience love in a new way.

Dozens expressed their love to me through phone calls, messages, comments, and texts when I finally admitted how I felt about my family situation.

It made me realize, though they may also have some fault in the situation, I was the one who kept running so quick, I totally missed what they were trying to offer.

Maybe they weren't offering it the "best" way possible or how I needed it, but at the end of the day, the views I thought they had of me and the views they hold of me are largely different.

Just because someone isn’t always up in your business or checking in on you, doesn’t mean they don’t care.

It also doesn’t mean they do care.

But it’s better to check than simply assume they don’t.

Because sometimes, we get so caught in our own whirlwinds, we forget to stop, and breathe, and remember those who’ve blessed our lives so very much.

Black Sheep.

I'm going to do something I really don't ever do.

I'm going to be very raw about my current condition.

I've just spent the last hour crying.

A small part of it was probably self-loathing, as is nearly all crying. 

But a very, very large part of it was grieving. 

For most of my life, I've just assumed no one liked me, and I wasn't worth the time.

I constantly worked to be loved.

As a child, I was told to be a quiet, good little girl. 

I was called "fat ass" by my mother's boyfriend and often snuck food when he went to sleep because I felt so much shame from his judgement.

I was told to leave him and my mother alone because they were busy, and I would ruin it.

I was trained on snaps to bring beers, and I watched my mom starve herself and attempt to make things perfect for her man, in her own attempt to earn love.

Because of my parents' (and their significant other's) drug issues, they became the black sheep of the family. And because I was their child, I got looped into the category. 

Maybe that part wasn't intentional, the part where I fell into that category, but the truth of the matter is, it's the category I was placed in. 

I flash forward to today where so many things are different...

I've escaped a life of addiction.

I've come out of a dark depression.

I've learned to love myself (most days) and to love others.

I've cut the web of lies associated with the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse I've experienced.

I'm finishing my last semester of college, and I'll be the first person in my family to finish a post-secondary education program.

When I'm not crazy busy with 18 credit hours and a job (like this semester), I do my best to see and help the ones I love.

But somehow, I still feel like I'm sort of the black sheep of the family.
Like nothing ever really changed.

Now, I realize performance should have little to do with status in the context of familial relations. 

But it does.

And I'm left to wonder how, despite everything I've done to get to today, why is it I'm still the one serving time for my mother's crimes?
Is it not enough I lived through years of abuse and neglect?

I don't say all of this to play the "victim card."
In fact, those who know me know how little I talk about my past and how much I detest people living in victim land.
I say all of this in serious consideration of the question, "when is it enough?"

My mom and my grandma tell me no one tells me anything or invites me to family events because they just assume I'm busy...

Well, yes. I'm busy.
But so is everyone.
We make time for the things we care about.
So not including me in family gatherings, not informing me of important information because I'm "busy" just tells me I'm not worth telling, and I'm not valued enough to be considered or wanted somewhere.
All this cycle reinforces is the lie I've worked so hard to destroy.
The one that tells me, "No one wants you. No one loves you. No one wants to be around you."

Yes.
My mom has sucked; she'll be the first to admit that.
And up until very recently, I wouldn't have confided in her, even a little bit.
But you know what?
This afternoon when I called her crying because I made a mistake by unknowingly making an incredibly heartless statement to my cousin because I wasn't aware her baby had passed in utero, she was the one listening to me sob, and she was the one who understood what it felt like to be the black sheep.

I still don't know when enough is enough, when we give up.
I'm thinking the answer is never because Jesus never gives up on us.
But in this moment, I am hurt.
I'm sad that I hurt someone else because of my ignorance.
I'm sad I'm left questioning my own self-worth.
And I'm sad that all around the world, there are so many people in broken relationships with the ones they were meant to love the most.