This Too

We forget, in the middle of hard things, that we've been in the middle of hard things before.

It never feels that way when you're in it. It feels permanent. Like this is just how life is now, like this heaviness has always been here and will always be here. The mind has a way of making the present feel like forever.

But it isn't.

The season that felt like it would never end ended. The version of hard that felt impossible to see past passed. The feeling that seemed to have moved in permanently shifted. Not always loudly. Not always with a clear before and after. Just quietly, the way things do, when you're not watching.

We have survived things we had no plan for. Seasons we didn't see coming. Versions of hard that had no name, no timeline, and no guaranteed ending.
And yet. Still here.

This feeling, the one sitting heavy right now, the one that feels like it has always been and will always be, it has an end too. It doesn't feel like it. But the last one did too.

And that one ended.

I don't know when this one lifts. Nobody does. But somewhere in the quiet truth of still being here, after everything, there's something worth holding onto.
It has always passed.

This too.

-Oluwademilade from MANI