it’s hard to walk away from something you [think you] love…but sometimes you have to. sometimes it’s not a choice. sometimes it’s a must. life can pull you in a direction that may be different from the path you thought you had laid out for yourself—the one you were mindlessly sauntering (or perhaps dragging your feet) through, most likely with your eyes closed, or your head up your ass. you can spend years planning and investing in a future that you are so sure of and then, in milliseconds, it’s gone. the dirt road you were traveling has blown away, and as the dust of your hopes and dreams settles in the air, you are left squinting through a scattered vision of what was…what could have been… *tear*

kiss it goodbye.

sure, you can look at the void set before you and miss what you believe you once had. you can spend your remaining time attempting to rebuild a broken past from a memory…or you can say eff that and create!

one brilliant and wonderful thing about feeling like you have nothing, is that, really, you can actually have anything. why can’t you? there is a certain freedom (or happiness) that comes with having no ties…no expectations…

embrace it.

So, at one time or another we will be saddled with a blank canvas—handed the opportunity to begin again—to whisper tearful farewells to old burdens, obligations, barely-healed wounds—to take the tools we, ourselves, have developed from a lifetime of learning and use them to build the world we were meant to live in…the life we were meant to have.

sometimes starting over is a small edit to the big picture, and sometimes (like recently) it’s an entirely new work of art. we all say goodbye to elementary school sandbox friends as we move on to start anew in middle school, and again in high school and college. we move away from home, we let go of first…and second…and third loves (and fourth and fifth and sixth…). we change jobs (i miss sneakers). we sell our first car, bury a pet, buy a new gaming system (that’s a biggie—Mario, I still love you!). letting go of some can be harder than others, but with every loss, you gain something new.

saying goodbye is never easy, and starting over takes tremendous willpower and strength—but once you get through the pain and anxiety, the fear and regret, what you have left is infinite possibility. You can be whoever you want to be, and your life can take the shape of whatever you choose, but if you don’t take the time to heal and take the time remember why your path has changed, you will lose sight of what could be and, instead, attempt to reconstruct a world that you were not meant for.

cut it out.

it gets better. i promise. what would you do, if you could do anything you wanted?