Ever feel suffocated and claustrophobic? Your lungs forget how to work, the weight of the earth is on your chest, and your body loses its ability to move out of the 6 feet deep hole that you are in? Your mind won’t shut up, your heart won’t slow down, your body won’t stop shaking and your tears won’t dry up? And since you are the pillar of your family, you aren’t allowed to break. To crumble. To fall. You’re crying alone in the bathroom for just enough time for the family not to get suspicious. When drowning feels like our new normal, we lose every hope in us to believe that tomorrow will be a better day.

Then one day we wake up with a little less weight on our chest. We’re taking a little more deep breaths. We have a little less tears on our cheeks. Despite all the evil and worry that seems to drown us often, there are days that we begin to heal just a little bit. We pull ourselves little by little toward the strength deep in us. As we heal, we start to evaluate things. Our lives, our health, our happiness, our unkept promises and our unmet goals. We begin the journey of embarking on our untold stories. We begin the chase of wrapping our mental health, physical health and emotional health up in a bow and hope that our loved ones remain proud of us as they watch us fight.

I turned 40 years old last December and while most people that I know were not happy to no longer be in their 30’s, I happily embraced it. Almost dying at 17 years old, I take each year older as a blessing. But being in this decade that I am the new kid in, I start to wonder why I am constantly feeling so lost and so defeated. Then my mind immediately swifts to the “what if’s”. What if I had written more, where would my writing be? What if I never took certain jobs, where would my career path be taking me? What if I stayed on those millions of diets I tried, would I really be a size 2 like they all promised? What if I got my shit together more in my 30’s, would my 6 feet deep hole that I feel stuck in, be nothing but a beautiful garden of pink roses? And the truth is, I am incredibly blessed to have the family, home and health that we all have. So, why do I feel so suffocated and claustrophobic?

It is very rare that I don’t have an incredible amount of weight on my shoulders. I take on my family’s weight and my friend’s weight, forgetting that I have weight of my own and while that is what all moms, wives and friends do, it never gets easier. I was hoping that once I turned 40, I would have a bigger understanding of how to juggle that, but to be honest, I still have no idea. I was hoping that at 40, I could focus on my journey of healing my own darkness, but so far, that hasn’t been the case. So, if at the end of the day, I were to stop with the “what if’s”, would I be settling? Would I be pausing my curious mind and walking right passed the chance of a “what if” to become the start of my healing journey? When do you turn down the weight of others, in hopes of not looking selfish or weak?

I figured out that instead of looking at my current situations and describing them as “Me being a tired 40-year-old”, I want to change my wording, my views, and my feeling. I want to say, “what’s next?” instead of “what if?” And I want to do that every day. I want to fight for my unkept promises to be finally set in stone. I want to lay my head on my pillow at night, knowing that I never settled at any point that day. I want to turn the “what if’s” into “what’s next” because I want to look at them as pauses in my life. Not dead ends. I want to allow healing to take first place instead of the feeling of selfishness taking the lead.

Too many times, we get so lost and tired of being in the place that we are in that we forget that we have the ability to change it. Having the understanding and patience that the ability to change it will be hard and a slow process, we can better handle the journey. The bumps along the way, the feelings of being suffocated and claustrophobic and the crying alone in the bathroom are all part of it. They say that following any dream, fixing any part of your life and healing any part of you will be hard and, at times, hurt more than expected. It’s those moments that carve us into the next versions of us. They get us ready, stronger and more resilient.

I want to lead a different course. I want to grow in a different direction. I want to learn a different version of the lesson. I want to live my life more towards the bright route instead of the lost route. I want to teach my kids that although the dark days will seem to try and swallow us up, we are too strong to let that happen. I may be the new kid on the 40 block, but I am about to dominate it. What’s next? Let’s see.