The Heaviness

There is a good bit of heaviness right now. Obligations. Stress.

I sat down tonight because I wanted to write a blog. I write two a week. Sometimes I’m behind. Sometimes I’m ahead.

Sometimes I know what I want to say, and other times, like now, I refer back to my broken paragraphs graveyard, a place where my half-formed ideas sit in perpetual purgatory.

Then, I saw a bullet point that I immediately dated to last November—

Me to [best friend]: Joy Day Sunday; Gala Wednesday; Marathon Saturday.

Friend: Hell yeah. Baddie frfr.

Me: Insane week.

Friend: Yeah, but you’re going to kill it.

Me: You think?

Friend: Yes, obviously. Have you met you?

Me: Is it possible to meet oneself?

Friend: Idk, you went to therapy.

Almost a year to the day later, I found myself laughing at the banter, wishing I had recorded my last response. At the time, saving this snippet, I think I thought maybe I’d write some blog about knowing oneself and what any of that even means.

But reading this now, I see something different. I see my slightly younger self overwhelmed. It’s like looking in a present day mirror. Except this time, I know how the story ends.

Joy Day? We still celebrated the anniversary of The Smile Project, marking fourteen full years of consecutive “Happiness is” posting.

My work gala? It was the first time that event has sold out in organization history and we brought in record setting revenue.

That marathon? A personal record and honestly the best race of my life.

It’s easy to get lost in the thick of it. To think that a stressful time will remain so forever. It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. But receiving this time capsule bullet point from my younger self reminded me that at the end of the day it really did all work out.

I know this in theory. It’s harder to make peace with in practice. I did celebrate Joy Day and host a gala and run a marathon in the span of a week and it was surely a little chaotic. But even just one year removed it feels lighter.

Perhaps a good reminder that the heaviness doesn’t hold.

And that, in time, things do work out even better than we may have dared to dream.