What’s Hard and What’s Easy

Sleep walking is the easy part. It is so easy to blindly repeat old patterns, no matter how toxic they are. It was so easy for me to climb mountains and run ultras. It was so easy to fall into relationships with emotionally unavailable men. It was so easy to betray myself time and time again. It was all I knew. And it never really felt bad - it felt exciting, exhilarating. It often felt exactly right. So natural.

What’s hard is waking the fuck up and realizing your dream life is actually a nightmare. Realizing that you’ve been abusing yourself and accepting abuse from others. Letting go of everything you knew and everything that made you feel safe, no matter how toxic it was. What’s hard is stepping into the open, completely raw and open-hearted and declaring to life: I do not know. Please show me the way.

What’s hard is breaking through years, generations, and lifetimes of trauma and toxicity. What’s hard is celebrating past accomplishments without them feeling tainted. What’s hard is creating a future when you have no idea what it holds. What’s hard is being in the present. What’s hard is sitting here in the dark, having let go of so much, and having not the faintest idea what comes next.

What’s easy is pretending.

What’s hard is radical real-ness.

That ultramarathon was easy. Those World Championships were easy. That degree was easy. That 4.0 GPA was easy. Because someone told me what to do and I did it, as near to perfectly as I could. Because I thought I needed to in order to deserve love. We humans will do anything, for love.

What’s hard is finding who I really am, after spending years denying her. What’s hard is knowing what my body needs, after years of silencing her. What’s hard is accepting that the game has changed and I need to completely re-learn how to play.

What’s easy is suppressing the truth, saying and even believing that everything is “fine.”

What’s hard is surrendering to the storm and trusting there is light on the other side.