twenty. fifteen.

This last year has been one hell of a ride. But the thing about life being really crappy for a really long time is this: it gets better.

Which doesn’t seem like much of a consolation, I know. But I don’t think it’s meant to be. It’s not the consolation, it’s the reward. It’s the everything-after.

It gets better. And that better is a delicious and meaty sort of that thing.

It. Gets. Better.

I say that with a deep exhale of relief and exhaustion and joy.

Like collapsing onto a bed at the end of a very long and very good day.

It gets better.

Shame recedes with the waves at low-tide. And gratitude rushes in. For everything. For the whole of my life. Not a part of it, but the whole messy lot. And for the grace that is that mess. The perfect ordered chaos of it. Because for what it is, it's quite beautiful. 

It gets better and good becomes a flutter in my chest. A constant hum.  And I become aware of the musculature of my own heart—how it pulses and expands and grows. And to be privy to the physical experience of that.…everything begins to feel like a prayer. A prayer of gratitude and wonder and a delicious sort of blooming. Every action an act of faith.

Faith.

I'm a religious person. So. Faith, that's the word that wets my lips and sits on my tongue and fills what once was empty.

Faith.

The thing that rolls out like the proverbial yellow brick road.  A path before you. And you don’t know where you’re going, but you know you’re on your way.

Faith.

Which makes fear beside the point. And makes tributaries of loneliness and sorrow and grief—small streams leading to a larger body of water, important and necessary but not the point.

Which disappears loneliness—transforms it—makes it sweet in its impermanence.

Everything worthy and good I learned through the lens of anxiety and depression and heartache. Which is something I struggle to explain—baggage is not exactly an easy lead in at any kind of party.

Now standing firmly on the other side of those things, the question of how I got better is one I’m often asked. And the answer is a simple and complex as this: I had faith I would. And so I did. And I still have faith.

And that very faith is what I move forward with into this new year. That nearly overwhelming stretch of time succeeds in distilling everything dark and complex and seemingly impossible into that one thing—that one word. And that one word will break me open—make me sturdy and soft and so very human.

Faith, the invitation to my very own ever-after.

 So there, 2015, it. gets. better.

xo.pa