The battles inside us

    There is a battle waging inside of everyone. Even the "happy" people of the world have some inner struggle, one that is unique to their individual personalities. For me, it is this deep sadness, whose icy fingers creep up on me, clawing at my soul when I least expect it. The war fluctuates, in a way. I'll be fine for days -sometimes weeks- until it consumes me, overwhelming like riptide at the ocean shore."Sadness" is rather an umbrella term, because to me, that one word means many other things:
    Depression.
    Insecurity.
    Anger.
    Fear.
   For many months I let the sadness win. I let it control my life and make me withdrawn. I let it distort my feelings so much that I became unstable, prone to completely random emotional outbursts. My thoughts became disfigured and I resigned myself to a lonely (but unreal) future where I was on the outside, as always, and no one gave a damn about me.
    That was not so long ago, but to me it feels like a thousand years have passed, that I'm living a different life now because I am such an altered person. It's not that I triumphantly overcame my emotional struggle, had myself a happily ever after, and tied it all up with a big bow and a "The End". I am much more of a realist than that, I have discovered. I have also discovered that our problems here on earth never truly end. There will  always be a battle- but are you ready to fight the good fight? Because to be blunt, it is always going to suck. There's no getting around that. You can never be totally free of unhappiness- no one can. And it's so important not to look at your own life and think there is something wrong with you because everyone else looks perfect on the outside and you don't. The difference between them and you is that you see the version of them that they project to the rest of the world, while you see every facet of your not-so-glamorous life. You see all your flaws and shortcomings. You are the only one who sees your brokenhearted self crying on the bathroom floor. You live with yourself every single day, and when you compare yourself to others, you think "I'm not normal. I'm not good enough. I struggle, but no one else does- why?"
    It's this dizzying cycle that sometimes makes me want to give it all up. But...I am learning to fight the good fight. I am going to battle this sadness throughout my entire life, because I'm (tragically) just like everyone else. And, yeah, I'm going to have good and bad days, and I'm going to fake a lot of smiles and break down from time to time, but I will be fighting the good fight. I won't give up- on myself, on other people, on the world. This place is a mess, full of messy, struggling people who lie about their messes and cry in the shower so no one knows what they're really going through. And I feel like people could work together to do great things in the world if we were just honest with each other. Because who wants to join forces with "perfect" people?
--Laura :)