Mallory McDonald

I haven’t written anything that I’ve shared in a while. Actually not since I graduated. And honestly it’s because I haven’t had anything good to say. Ben Franklin said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing,” and I didn’t think my life fit into either.

But, that probably isn’t true. After I graduated I moved across the country to a new city, made new friends, went to Cape Cod for the first time with my best friend, saw my hero in concert, started a new job—blah, blah, blah.

No one really cares. There’s enough of the bullshit on Instagram and Facebook. And everyone’s life looks perfect from the pictures.

But, there’s a part of life no one shows on social media. No one talks about the crying in the bathroom and then perfectly fixing your make-up so no one can see the signs of sobbing, feeling like a failure because you have no idea where your life is going or what you’re doing, going to Mass and literally begging God to give you a reason to live, getting drunk off tequila on a Wednesday night because you just needed a break from thinking, having a dance party by yourself because at least for a bit you can trick yourself into feeling happy, working out for hours and still hating your body.

Yeah, all that. All the rest of life—that is just freakn hard.

Maybe you’re not in the hard place now. Hopefully because it’s past you, but sadly these times ebb and flow. Come and go.

And I don’t know what’s making you cry and you don’t need to know what’s making me, but there is one undeniable fact that I need to remember and so should you: we all have those moments where we feel like we don’t matter, like our lives aren’t for anything, like life is just disappointments and suffering. But, the truth is you’re not alone in that.

And I don’t have the answer for you to fix those feelings. I wish I did. I wish like hell I had it for myself too. But, I don’t. The only thing I have is pretending that I’m okay and that I’m handling everything in a healthy way. Just getting through the day and then the next one and then the next and pretty soon it’s Friday and I’m a little further away from my breakdown in front of a nice stranger named Kevin who gave me a tissue.

And then on Friday we can drink. And we can dance and we can listen to old songs that we loved when we were seven and we can remember that life wasn’t always this hard.

Which means it won’t always be this hard either.

So all I really have to say today is hold on. Hold on to where you are, make a mental memory, enjoy the joy and take the shit for what it is. Put on a little lipstick, have a cocktail and let it go.