It’s a cliché for Lifetime movies and B-list HBO short series everywhere: realizing that a family member has been affected by your actions, or lack thereof, is the epiphany a person needs to shape up.

You likely don’t have to think very hard for incidences of parents quitting smoking to extend their lifespans to increase the probability of seeing their kids grow up, or of people breaking up with their significant others for their families’. But it’s seldom as simple as TV often portrays it.

Background: I am sitting in Starbucks during my senior year of high school. I’ve gained thirty pounds on my once athletic frame, and my eyes are always puffy from either exhaustion or crying. A former teacher of mine and I are having coffee, and she is attempting to persuade me that my home life will not always be as poor as it is. She says that I need to wait it out, that I will succeed with or without my family’s assistance, and that I should not feel alone while enduring it.

I’m 18, I smoke cigarettes in my rebellion to my father’s position as a physician, and put forward effort into being a normal young adult. It’s always been evident that my parents’ wrongs are usually done with good intentions; they, in all candor, believe that what they have done and continue to put me under is the best for me. This fact is little consolation to me, and I end up with multiple breakdowns as a teenager. I give up, and try again; give up, and try again; give up, and try again.

At some point, I started working towards all the wrong things. I don’t know it yet, but the amount of exertion I put into partying and being “normal” is extraordinary, and incredibly far from normal. And yet, I more or less survive life’s trials and tribulations while depressed, resentful of my family, and passively (later, actively) suicidal in my reckless endeavors in the city and outside of it.

My father does not react well to my moving out. He falls into a deeper depression, and becomes nearly obsessed with my daily life. My mother adapts by effectively ignoring my absence and my existence; perhaps, as a result of my sister growing into my role as the elder daughter struggling to find meaning in anything. They blame me for these developments; rather than going somewhere my pain can be remedied, I have left it in my parents’ home to fester. Neither turn out to be true; I took my hurt everywhere I went.

I touched people’s lives and left them with a little bit of that hurt without reducing my own. It was akin to a virus, and it spiraled out of control many times.

Fast forward two years: my sister is in college while living at home. My parents let her drive, let her wear shorts, and don’t make her abide to an 8pm curfew. She struggles in her studies, and they try to help her in whatever she pursues. My youngest sibling is treated normally for a high schooler. Without going into any detail at all, my mother and father are good to them. And they are good and kind to me. I am no longer angry – I have lived through more than someone my age should have. We have all changed, for better or for worse.

Writing this is not meant to trivialize those with abusive families, nor is it meant to dramatize the tension that all families undergo when during adolescence. Rather, I write this to point out that in addition to circumstances changing, people do indeed change for the better, despite popular belief. We learn from our mistakes. My parents knew that if they maintained their rearing methods, my sisters would struggle, and leave, the way I did.

I love them more than anything, but love is not enough to maintain such relationships, even within families. But love is enough to force people to change, and to forgive. We forgave each other (or at least I like to think so). It is unbearably hard at times to move on at times, but it almost always the best option.

I was about to start high school when my dad was diagnosed with a grade three brain tumor. Even at that age, I did not fully understand the severity of his cancer or what the next steps entailed. Luckily—with one of the best brain surgeons from Duke Medical Center and the right treatment—my dad survived and has never relapsed. Life completely changed for him at the age of 50, and he was never able to return back to work, but we thank God every day for His miracle.

As I started high school, I noticed there was a football game held every September for Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month honoring a student I never had the chance to meet. Matt Hobby passed away from Ewing’s Sarcoma at the age of 18. Ewing’s Sarcoma is found mainly in the bones or tissue of children—which can’t always be operated on.

I remember feeling confused about how doctors were able to save my dad’s life but not Matt’s.

Facing this fact at a young age showed me how each cancer and every person is unique. My dad might have survived through chemotherapy and radiation, but he was fully-grown and had a strong immune system. The fact that no new drugs have been developed for children’s cancer in the last 30 years made my stomach churn.

These kids need treatments specifically designed for their smaller bodies. Only 4% of government funding is dedicated toward childhood cancer research, with the other 96% percent only funding research for adult cancers.

I knew I wanted to make a difference for the better.

Growing up, we see pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness everywhere we go, and simple awareness can go a long way. As a freshman coming into the University of Georgia, I decided to start the first Rally Foundation non-profit college chapter to start spreading cancer awareness to a younger generation—normally childhood cancer does not attract advocates until it directly affects someone’s child. Many parents thanked our club for putting their children first; they know that it’s hard for college students to picture themselves in their shoes.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to make a difference in these parents’ lives and happy that my club will be continuing next year, even when I am no longer a student. My club members are passionate about this cause, and I hope more colleges will be inspired to start their own chapters.

Now, as I walk away from my four years and countless hours of maintaining the club at UGA, I know that these kids will always be my top priority. Advocating for this cause has changed my outlook on life itself.

I have always talked about why I fight for these children, but I never told anyone how these kids are the ones changing MY life.

I had a major surgery in college that gave me a reality check about my health. I remember feeling depressed during the recovery, but then I thought about the kids beating cancer. They are technically “in recovery” their whole lives due to side effects from their harsh treatments. If they can handle it, so can I.

Just when I thought I could live a normal life again, last year I woke up with an excruciating pain in my arm. I couldn’t use it for a month, and the pain soon spread to my neck. Doctors found in my MRI that I have Type One Chiari Malformation, which is unfamiliar to many people because of a lack of awareness.

To put Chiari in my own words, my brain is too big for my skull and my cerebellum is pushing on my spinal cord. Thankfully, Type One means I have enough space right now where my spinal fluid can still flow freely and I will not need brain surgery. Neck pain, headaches, weakness/numbness of muscles, and balance problems are the main symptoms I live with.

I am in the process of changing my life around to live more comfortably and continue to monitor my Chiari. I have endured months of physical therapy and spend more hours in doctors’ offices than people twice my age. Daily activities like driving, sitting, sleeping, and typing this article bring me horrible pain. But even though I physically cannot give these kids my signature piggy-back ride anymore, I will always think of them.

Any kind of head injury worsens my Chiari. For the people who don’t know me, I am a very high energy—and often clumsy—person. However, I hate living life in fear. I hate being terrified to ride a bike or play sports. I thrive for adventure, but anything that puts my body at risk is a big “no no.”

In the past, I have thought “why me?” I hated being jealous and comparing my life to others. I learned to turn away from those negative thoughts because that was not the way God wanted me to handle my pain.

I thank God for using my pain to help me become a stronger person. I thank Him for showing me how to use my passion to help others. The quote I live by and will continue to as I monitor my Chiari is: “Use your pain to work purpose in your life.”

Without having fought for these kids, I know I would not have the positive approach to live life that I do now. It is so important to always be thankful, no matter how bad my situation may seem. I enjoyed a normal childhood and so many kids cannot even say that. These “superheroes” fight hard, never give up, and of course change the world.

Challenges arise in everyone’s life. Knowing how to face them and how to learn from them separates those who overcome a challenge from those who do not.

I proudly swim for the University of Georgia, which happens to be one of the foremost dominant programs in the nation, winning two NCAA championships in the past three years. Being a student-athlete at UGA, I know that challenges are present every day, whether in the form of a practice that appears insurmountable or studying for a dreaded exam.

Facing certain challenges can cause stress and frustration, which I have recent experience in. This past December I underwent surgery on my right shoulder and nothing has been more frustrating than coping with the injury before surgery and with the recovery process that ensued. Despite the irritating frustration and incredible challenge, this experience has been the most rewarding in my life thus far.

I have always been involved in many sports, but I chose to continue with swimming in order to pursue a collegiate career.

Throughout the many sports that I’ve participated in, including track and tennis, I had only ever been injured once with stress fractures. That changed during the summer of 2014 over Fourth of July weekend. I rarely go to lakes or do things that could potentially harm my being an athlete, but that weekend I decided to have some fun and go to my friend’s lake house.

Though I only went inner-tubing twice over the three days of being there, that second time was enough to cause an injury. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I remember feeling a jerking within my shoulder when I tried to hang onto the inner-tube while the speedboat flung me into the air off a wave.

I didn’t fall off, but my shoulder sure wanted to.

The rest of the weekend I just “relaxed” on the boat while trying to shake off the dull throbbing pain in my shoulder. If you don’t know anything about the sport of swimming, just know that having any shoulder injury is very bad.

Swimmers complete miles in the pool every day with a constant repetitive rotation of our shoulders, which puts a lot of stress on the joint and surrounding muscles. Any injury, however minor, is a threat to a swimmer’s career.

After that weekend, I spent about a month modifying my training in order to tolerate practices. Unbeknownst to me, my bicep tried compensating for the lack of strength in my shoulder; so when I went to see a doctor, I was diagnosed with having bicep tendonitis, which was true, but not the main problem.

I had two weeks before I moved to Athens.

During those weeks I took time out of the pool solely to rehab my bicep tendon. By the time I arrived to UGA, the tendonitis was much better, but not gone. Furthermore, right when I started practicing with the team my shoulder immediately flared back up, and my tendon was still a bit inflamed. No amount of rehabilitation was able to improve my shoulder, so in early September I went in for an MRI.

Turns out I had distal clavicular osteolysis from separating my AC joint. The only logical response to this was to say that I did it on that inner-tube on July 4th. I knew that because the pain started from that day forward.

From the separation and osteolysis, I had bone spurs that took up the majority of my joint space, causing a bone-on-bone grinding action every time I moved my arm in the pool. This explained why my shoulder hurt every time I took a stroke at practice.

Knowing my true injury, I spent my entire first semester at UGA in limbo and in constant frustration, trying to avoid the inevitable decision to say yes to shoulder surgery.

With this injury, surgery was the only way it could be fixed. This fact frustrated me more than anything. Coming into UGA, I had the mindset of training harder than ever in order to improve in my sport and in my overall health. However, my shoulder inhibited me from doing that. I couldn’t give 100% because my shoulder wouldn’t allow it.

Since my shoulder restrained me, I was held back from competition throughout the fall. To me, nothing is more frustrating than being restricted. Seeing my team train and compete without me was defeating. As a temporary solution, I received a cortisone injection into my AC joint. After that didn’t help, I faced the inevitable and decided to schedule shoulder surgery, knowing my first season would be a flop.

Luckily, my coaches graciously allowed me to take a medical redshirt, which would save my first year of eligibility, giving me the opportunity to start anew as a freshman in the fall of 2015. Knowing this gave me some of my inner peace back while trying to cope with the recovery process. After having surgery in December 2014, I came to discover many things about myself and about my sport, which I would have only known through this injury.

Swimming is not my life. Though many athletes come to college just for their sport, we are first and foremost students.

One’s sport should be a stepping-stone into learning and preparing for later things in life. Being an athlete requires one to overcome difficult practices, recover from a failure, manage success with humility, and understand time management. I’ve always had good time management, but with my injury I had more free time than ever, and I realized how easily I could take my free time for granted.

Instead of using time to study, it could casually be thrown away by watching TV, partying, or just simply procrastinating. I wasted some of this time by doing those things, discovering later that the new extra time that I had was an opportunity to improve.

Having this extra time, I dedicated much of it to my studies and improved my grades as the semester went on. My injury, therefore, taught me how to manage my time more efficiently and delegate more of it to studying.

I realized what my actual goals were in life (at least for now). Being injured is awful, but it made me realize how badly I wanted to improve as an athlete. From December to March, I couldn’t swim. Before my injury, the longest time I had been out of the water from training was two weeks, so this lapse in my training was extremely tough to adjust to.

Each day I did cardio in the gym that overlooks the pool that my team practices in. Seeing my team practice every day was frustrating because I was not with them, but seeing them practice made me want to do everything in my power to get my shoulder healthy and get back in the pool as quickly as possible.

Not being able to swim gave me the hunger I needed to drive my passion to improve.

This passion didn’t only apply to the pool however—my desire to improve carried over into my academics and future goals as well. I had a lot of time to think while doing cardio every day, and my thoughts turned into the goals, both long-term and short-term, that I am striving to reach.

Most important to me, I realized the importance of adjusting to and overcoming adversity. I have faced many failures, as well as successes, throughout the sport of swimming. Even when I thought a certain failure was the end of the world, it wasn’t.

From having numerous conversations with my family, my dad in particular, and my coach, I learned that what matters most is how one addresses the failure or setback and works to overcome and learn from it.

Recovering from surgery has not been easy, but all of the challenges that I’ve faced along the way this past half year have been worthwhile and eye opening. Though the first couple of days after my surgery were painful and it seemed that it would take a lifetime to recover, here I am six months later about to compete for the first time in almost eight months.

No matter how daunting a challenge or task may seem, there is always a way to complete and overcome it—it just takes patience and determination.

My injury, and the long recovery process, changed the way I think about my college experience, my goals, and most importantly, myself. Though it was extremely frustrating and taxing, the experience has been a blessing in disguise.

Now, I am willing to work harder than before because I know what I want to accomplish in my collegiate career as an athlete and in my lifetime. Every challenge has its obstacles and doubts, but I now look past those and seek the positives within each test, because I know that I have the strength and determination to overcome any challenge and trial that I put my mind to.

The other night I was sitting around a table playing cards with some friends, while another group of friends gathered around the television engulfed in the finale of the famous show, “The Bachelorette”. Why was I not one of the girls with my eyes glued to that screen for two hours?

That love is not the love of our dreams.

That love is forced for 12 weeks until a female narrows down a group of 25 men to a single one, who she is apparently lucky to call her future husband. Now, I’m not bashing on this show, I find it quite amusing and I definitely get a kick out of it. That said, that show does not portray the love we want or need.

• Love is something every girl dreams about.
• Love is something that makes a girl so vulnerable on the inside that words cannot come close to describing the feeling it brings with it.
• Love is strong, so powerful that it can shape our daily lives.
• We constantly place our self-worth on that feeling of love.

Do people love me?

Society has placed it in our minds that we are on a constant search for the one that will give us this “feeling.” But is this “feeling” really so great? It causes so much heartache, so much jealousy, so much sadness, and yet it is all we are searching for as human beings.

Does my significant other love me? Do my friends love me? So much is dependent on love. I see elderly couples walking down the street hand-in-hand clearly in love, and I wonder … how can it be that easy?

The love I have experienced has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride filled with never ending twists and turns. Love can never be simple. I think of that couple, I think of the amount of hardship and problems their love most likely endured, and how in the end they are together, hand-in-hand, loving each other.

Then I think of my best friend, 20 years of age, experiencing a love that at the same time is breaking her heart. How can love bring so much happiness, but at the same time be so menacing to someone’s mind and soul? It makes absolutely no sense.

We dream of this love that is so easy, so simple, so perfect; a love that we honestly will most likely never experience. Why keep searching for it, you ask? Love is what keeps us going. It will find someone multiple times in their lifetime taking on different forms, but affecting them all the same. Love is the boundless feeling that overtakes every mind, body, and soul on this planet and there is absolutely no stopping it. The only thing you can do is embrace it and pray that it happens to be the love that you ultimately desire.

It seems from the moment I was born, I was thinking about my future calling. I remember back in high school when my idea of a perfect, successful life entailed both my husband and I being renowned doctors and our children going to prestigious schools. But, you know what they say… if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans for tomorrow.

Most people spend a lifetime figuring out who they are, but who I was hit me like a truck my junior year of high school.

My best friend had had a rough weekend that was exacerbated by attending school. It was a rough Monday for me, as well, because I knew she was upset, but I had to sneak my phone and try to talk to her when I could throughout the day. After school, I received a message that read “Promise me, no matter what, you’ll remember you’re a good person.”

That moment started what was to be the worst night of my life. I lived over an hour away with no license, and I couldn’t reach her for 4 hours.

She finally answered the phone, and I thought I was going to fall apart when she told me she attempted suicide a few hours earlier. She repeatedly told me “I hate my life, I want to die.”

But we got through that night, and the next day, and the next until she was okay. Today, she’s a successful Division I athlete who loves life and lives hers to the fullest. That night made me think, “I wonder how many people in the world want to kill themselves.”

I went on Twitter and searched the word suicidal, and I was not expecting the dark world into which I was suddenly thrown. I found Twitter accounts with names such as @CarveAndStarve, @BladesandRegret, and @JustKillMe.

I saw tweet after tweet after tweet of people degrading themselves and stating how much they wanted to die. That’s when I thought to myself, “What could I do to make these people’s lives better?”

And suddenly, @HopeHeals1 was born. My future calling had just begun, and in high school.

I started a twitter account in which I talk to people who are suicidal. My best friend told me she didn’t know what she would have done without me that night, which made me think about how many people just need one person in their corner if for nothing more than to be there for them and tell them it’s going to be okay.

I talk to people who struggle with depression, anxiety, self-harm, gender dysphoria, eating disorders, and other obstacles that have consumed their being. The more and more people I helped, the more I started to feel better myself and more steadfast in who I am. Of all the types of people God could’ve made me to be, He made me a helper.

When I came to this realization about my life, I knew what my earthly purpose was and who He wanted me to be. I used to always ask myself if Heaven was the end goal, what’s the point of life on earth? When I found out what that was, I woke up every day excited to find someone else who needed help.

Sometimes, it got hard to talk to these people, and I wondered if this is what my calling really was. But Galatians 5:13 says, “For you, brothers, were called to freedom. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity to gratify your flesh, but through love make it your habit to serve one another.”

I’ve realized my purpose in life is to serve others out of love for them, no matter how hard it gets.

Make the world a better place by making one person smile at a time. I know it sounds cliché, but that’s what I was doing. I reached out to one person, and one person turned into two, and two turned into five, five turned into 15 and so on, but I still didn’t feel like I was reaching enough people. I wanted to reach out to more people with a message that says they’re loved and they’re not alone.

I asked my followers to email me their stories if they wanted to use them to help others. I received over 100 stories and used the majority of them in the book I published entitled Hidden in the Shadows.

My book is a compilation of my followers’ stories separated into different hardships such as eating disorders, depression, friends and family who have been affected, etc. and ends with success stories and words of encouragement for people who are going through some of the same things the people in my book are.

The responses I’ve gotten from my book are amazing, and it’s so satisfying to know that the little things I do are helping people become happier.

If you’re still going through your life aimlessly, don’t worry, because God has a plan for you.

If you’re going through a lot right now and just can’t see your destiny, know that God took the worst night of my life and made it shaped it for the better. If you aren’t religious, you have a purpose too. Everything happens for a reason, including your existence.

While I couldn’t see any good in that situation at the time, now I’m grateful that it happened. Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I say all that to say, my calling found me. I wasn’t even looking for it. When I graduate college, I have plans to go to medical school and become a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Everyone deserves happiness, and it starts within.

Talking to people and making them smile has become my passion, and I can’t wait to do it for a living.

I don’t expect sharing my story to inspire you to suddenly overcome your struggles, but if nothing else, I pray you received some hope that your darkest nights can turn into your brightest days.

The calling God had for me turned me into a selfless person who would do anything for anyone and is nice simply because you never know the battle someone else is fighting. When you realize the calling for your life, it will change you for the better. Just be patient, for your purpose is greater than your challenges.

Baseball. Cheering. Crack of the Bat. If you’re at Turner Field, the Tomahawk Chop. Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, my summers included hanging out at the pool, country concerts, going to as many Braves games as possible, and tailgating in the infamous blue lot.

Goal-Setting

I was always fascinated by the game of baseball and all the behind the scenes work that went into putting on the game—from an operations standpoint to connecting all the pieces for things to run as they should.

Like many boys growing up, I wanted to be a professional ball player in the “show”, playing a game that I love for a living. After coming to grips with my mediocre baseball skills, I sought the next best thing: working for an MLB team and doing any and everything it would take to land a job in professional baseball. I wanted to be around the game and involved with the sport everyday, ultimately deciding to major in sport management at the University of Georgia to help me achieve that dream.

Failing…

I applied in March of 2015 for the Braves Ticket Event Team (TET), a group of about 30 college students that work at the home games and assist with raffle and special group outings. I thought this would be the perfect way to get my foot in the door with the Braves and make a name for myself within the organization.

While I had prior experience assisting my school’s athletic department and doing volunteer work with different sport organizations, I was not selected for the job with the Ticket Event Team. It would have been a great opportunity to start my career with the Braves, but that wasn’t in the cards.

After a couple of months, the summer slowly started to creep around the corner. I had no idea what I was going to do to get more experience in the sports industry. I know I wanted to get involved with something, but my options seemed limited with UGA’s Athletic Department slowing down for the season.

Turning the Tide

One morning in April, I woke up to a Facebook message from Bryan Wish, the founder of this platform, whom I had met several times before through Josh Jones, a mutual friend. Bryan told me about an opportunity to become involved with the Atlanta Braves as a college sales ambassador. He was putting together a group of students to reach out to Georgia colleges and universities, getting student and Greek organizations to come out to games this season. I immediately told him I was interested and thought, “Here is my shot to make a name for myself with the Braves!”

The Results of My Efforts (see the fine print)

I messaged and emailed everyone I could think of from UGA to have them come out to a game, but I didn’t receive the response I wanted.

I thought to myself that if I really wanted to make a name for myself, I needed to set myself apart from everyone else. I began reaching out to schools all over the state as well as schools in Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina.

I spent countless hours that summer on my computer sending hundreds of emails and messages and trying to take full advantage of the great opportunity I had been given.

It almost became an addiction in the fact that I would keep finding new leads and would pursue any organization I could think of that may be interested.

I finally broke into schools like Georgia Southern, Auburn, Valdosta State, South Carolina, Tennessee, Clemson, and many others.  Through the course of the season, I sold 2,436 tickets, $24,000+ in ticket sales, and created successful sales at 12 different colleges. Now that the season has closed, I am proud to say that I have led all the college ambassadors in sales as well as overall tickets sold. On top of all that, I’m applying for a position with the Braves in the next few weeks.

The 9th Inning

When I was turned down from the Ticket Event Team before the season started, I was really bummed because I knew that could be my chance to make a name for myself. When Bryan came to me with the opportunity to get involved however, I needed to “knock it out of the park” to make people with the Braves recognize my work ethic and notice me for a position after school.

My advice to anyone who wants to work in sports is to find your passion—whether that’s college sports, sales, marketing, public relations, or community outreach—and pursue it relentlessly until an opportunity comes your way. When it does, take full advantage, set yourself apart, and something good will come of it.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”  – Steve Jobs

Everyone has challenges. Savannah’s spine is twisted so much that her diaphragm on one side can’t punch her lung to get gunk out … on top of that her body is too weak to cough with enough force anyway.

She had to stay home from school today because she coughs incessantly when she gets just a little gunk in her lungs. The attached picture is of her using her cough assist machine to suck gunk out.

We spent a week at Duke University a few months ago as a part of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network. For five days, 10-12 hours per day, we met with doctors, reviewed data from the almost 10 other major hospitals Savannah has visited since she was born, and of course they conducted X-rays, drew blood, told her to cough harder, harder, harder into a tube over, and over, and over again. And they are still stumped. It’s genetic, but we know nothing more than that.

But it’s not a sad story. It’s a challenge.

And everyone has them. Life can be hard. Overwhelming. The unknown can be scary. Watching someone suffer or being the one suffering can break your heart, weigh you down, and feel like it is too much to handle. But it’s not about the challenges; everyone has challenges. It’s about how we live through them.

Savannah lives really well through her challenges and in doing so she inspires me to do the same. She’s not just tough; she is faithful (full of faith). I am sharing this so that you can know that we all have challenges in our lives. Savannah inspires me and I want to help her amplify the voice of her life so she can inspire you too.

Don’t allow the challenges to win. Live well through them; not only will you be happy you did but you’ll inspire others to do the same!

Being happy sounds so simple.

We’ve grown up learning “happy” as a common adjective to describe our mood and how we’re feeling. We are continuously finding ourselves evaluating whether we’re happy or sad, but sometimes we can lose sight of what makes us happy.

Whether it’s love, friendships, school, or work, it’s so ridiculously easy to get caught up in something else and completely forget what makes you happy. It sounds cheesy as anything, but I’ve realized in the last month or so, the only person that can truly make you happy is YOU.

I believe that you really have to lose sight of what makes you happy to end up finding it again, and I’ve experienced this first hand. Love is also a word that sounds so simple. We say we “love” so many things on a daily basis, but there is so much more to love than just feeling affectionate.

With love comes an endless amount of challenges.

I’ve only been in love once in my entire life, and it’s the most indescribable feeling in the world. After a fourteen-month relationship and whirlwind of emotions, fights, good times, bad times, weird times, awkward times, and everything in between, our relationship came to an end.

It was hard to pinpoint where our problems were coming from, but we both knew that we couldn’t bear to keep making each other unhappy. It was mutual, because we both realized how unhappy we were, but we had been ignoring it.

Sometimes, in relationships, you get so caught up in another person that you solely depend on them for everything, but mostly for your happiness. I had completely lost sight of what made me happy and who I was.

If anyone had told me this during any part of our relationship, I would’ve brushed it off and just kept thinking at the very least, I still had my boyfriend to fall back on. It took my lowest low and the very bottom for me to realize that I wasn’t necessarily unhappy with my relationship, I was unhappy with myself.

It’s a dreadful moment that you don’t want to come to terms with, but once I did I could literally feel a weight being lifted off of my shoulders. I spent the last fourteen months neglecting relationships with friends, neglecting my own feelings, and ultimately giving my all into a relationship that wasn’t giving back to me.

I wanted to believe every piece of advice I was given in the first weeks of my heart-breaking split, but I just couldn’t with the way I felt. I was still in love with my ex-boyfriend, and that wasn’t going to change right away.

I knew time would be the best thing for me, but who is ever really excited for time to make them feel better? I would’ve paid a million dollars to speed up the clock and fast-forward any amount of time just to swallow the grieving period and never look back. Boy, am I thankful that I didn’t have a million dollars and that speeding up time isn’t a real thing.

Time can be a cruel thing, but in the end time is our friend.

I learned more about myself in a month than I ever had in my whole life. Happiness depends completely on you, not anyone else. If you can learn to be happy with yourself, then the rest will work itself out.

To some people, it’s a foreign thought to even have to evaluate their happiness. Throughout the deterioration of my relationship, I would always look at people I knew and wonder to myself how they’re so happy, whether they were single, going through a hard time, or just had nothing exciting going on. I was plain jealous.

I wanted to know why that couldn’t be me and why I couldn’t have it figured out, even when I felt like I had it all, boyfriend included.

Happiness surely doesn’t come easy to some, but I promise that the sooner you start searching for it within yourself, the sooner you will become the person you want to be.