“Stand, the fuck, up”

You spend four hours packing things that are from another life. Things that you need to fit into your new life. Most of it you don’t even want but out of financial necessity, you know you need to. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just start completely over? However, practicality needs the front seat. So you spend half your day packing up stuff. Things. Your things. His things. Things that use to be your things. Packing them away for a new life. Your world has been shattered and split into numerous boxes to go to different places. It’s all stuff. Things. And none of it matters. It’s not your home anymore. And it’s funny how quickly your realize that it no longer feels like home. This place you you once loved so much and had so much hope for. THIS was going to be the happy place. Each one of the 8 or so homes that you lived in you thought would be the happy place. This would be the place that wouldn’t have bad memories left behind. A memory of a bad fight. A memory of a drunken or sleepless night. They all carried them. You left them and moved on and this one is no different.

And now you know that things will never be the same. You will never be the same. You don’t know what that looks like yet but you know you feel different. You exist. And you can feel that you exist. Some may understand that statement and some may not but that’s the best way I can explain it. At this point you just exist and you just “stand, the fuck, up”. That is a quote from one of my favorite books. “This is Happy” by Camilla Gibb. And that is one of my favorite quotes because that is really what you have to do. It is complicated but also so simple. When life knocks you down. When circumstances knock you down. When situations knock you down. That’s what you do. You are going to need to remind yourself that many times in your journey but always always always… just “stand, the fuck, up”. I did not stand up for almost 24 years. He never thought I would. He was wrong.