They say if you love someone let them go. I don’t know who they are, but they don’t tell you that if you let go of someone you love, or they let you go that it hurts like a stupid son-of-a-bitch. That’s what they don’t tell you. They also don’t tell you that they are assholes that demean and diminish complicated life experience into trite and novel, neatly packaged sayings. They also don’t warn you that heart break, tied to a brain tumor, tied to chronic physical pain is an anchor waiting to sink you to the bottom of the ocean.

They suck. This is why I don’t swim in open waters.

They don’t tell you that filling your time won’t fill the void left by failed love and the feeling of disenfranchisement that comes with newly acquired disability. They don’t tell you your disability will make you feel sad and left out when you watch those you let go fly away. They don’t tell you that some people won’t fly back. They don’t tell you because that won’t fit into the nice package they use to pacify you. It’s too messy for that box we like to put our problems in. They don’t warn you what life can really be.

And if you are lucky, which I know I am when I am not wallowing in my own self-pity, your friends and family will lift you up. Mine have done that. But, they? The “them” that makes the clean little sayings and just throws them in the face of your suffering, well they can go to hell. And they can stop being ridiculous.

Forget them, instead of whoever that magical they is I have a beautiful family and family of choice that loves me each and every day, and they won’t cover me in optimistic dribble for its own sake. They will stand behind me as I fight to claim whatever life it is that stands before me. And I will stand behind them as they each forge forward into their own lives.

That’s the they I want on my side. The real people. The ones who care and eat $40 dollars of candy with me for no reason other than we can because we are alive. Or the ones that take the time to visit me and share in ice cream cups and brunches. Or the ones that hug you so tight you feel fully alive for that moment once again. The ones that wait up with me and come visit me. The one’s I do my best to show up for too. They won’t forsake me because my life cannot be solved in a series of neat little sayings that get painted on neat little crafts to be bought and sold on Etsy.

They believe in me and I believe in them. 

So in my moment of stress I go back to Jim Carrey, in the quote I often overuse from his graduation speech last year. And that, my friends is where I leave you tonight, “Oh, and why not take a chance on faith as well? Take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire. Faith leaps over it.”

Peace and love and for tonight gratitude and healing,

Samira