When you are coming off drugs, when you are held down by the crippling force of anxiety and pain; when your eyes are finally open and you see your life for what it truly is, all of the things you run from catch up with you. Like a strong surge caused by a hurricane, it washes over you, and the tide tries to pull you back underwater, back where it is safe. Back where the comforting numbness and cold of unawareness can smother your senses and put you back to blissful sleep. You never learned to deal with this reality, the actual discomfort of being alive on planet earth, with all its beautiful anguish and fear. It is hard to see from this point all the wonderful things about life, the things that get the rest of humanity through every day. The bliss that can come from living is obscured because you are still underwater; you can see it, just barely, like sunlight through salt water. But it is so, so far; it is hard to believe anything more can actually exist.

It is comforting to know that there are things bigger than you and your personal pain. That the sun will continue to set and rise with or without you. That there are millions who suffer far worse and live through each day with that struggle. If they can open their eyes each morning, pick up that ever so heavy burden, and walk with it smiling, so can you. There is something indomitable about the human spirit, something unspeakably powerful. Inside you burns a will to live that is stronger than any drug, stronger than any pain, stronger than any fear. The power to defeat what you face is already within you. It resides inside you, deep down, silenced and shuttered; but it will rise again, as will you. There is very little you cannot come home from. Even if you are all alone. Even if your pain must be silent and you must shoulder it by yourself. You are human. You are strong.

And the sunlight is there above the waves, waiting to warm you. Waiting to welcome you back into life. There are only better things ahead.

Hold on.