Instructions for a bad day

There will be bad days.
Be calm.
Loosen your grip opening each palm slowly now.
Let go.

Be confident. Know that now is only a moment and if today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow today will have ended.
Be gracious.
Accept each extended hand offered to pull you back from somewhere you cannot escape.
Be diligent.
Scrape the grey sky clean, realise that every dark cloud is a smoke screen meant to blind us from the truth. And the truth is whether we see them or not, the sun and moon are still there and always there is light.
Be forthright.
Despite your instinct to say “its okay, I’m alright,”
Be honest.
Say what you feel without fear or guilt. Without remorse or complexity. Be lucid in your explanations. If you think for one second no one knows what you have been going through, be accepting of the fact that you are wrong. The long drawn breaths and heavy sighs of despair have at times been felt by everyone. Pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you legion.

We are hungry underdogs, we are risers with dawn, we are pressers of on. We will station ourselves to the calm; we will hold ourselves steady.
Be ready player 1!
Life is going to come at you armed with hard times and tough decisions. Your voice is your weapon, your thoughts are your ammunition. There are no free extra men. Be aware that in the instant that now passes it exists now as then. So, be a mirror reflecting yourself back and remembering the times you thought all of this was too hard and that you would never make it through. Remember the times you could have pressed quit, but you hit continue.

Be forgiving.
Living with the burden of anger is not living. Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need. Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed.
Be persistent.
Be the weed growing through the cracks in the cement. Beautiful! Because it does not know it isn’t supposed to grow there.
Be resolute.
Declare what you accept is true in a way that envisions the resolve with which you accept it.

If you are having a good day, be considerate.
A simple smile could be the first-aid kit someone has been looking for.  And if you believe with absolute honesty that you are doing everything you can, do more.

There will be bad days. Times when the world weighs on you for so long it leaves you looking for an easy way out. There will be moments when the drought of joy seems endless; instances spent pretending everything is alright when it clearly is not. Check your blind spot; see that love is still there.
Be patient.
Every nightmare has a beginning but every bad day has an end. Ignore what others have called you, because I’m calling you friend.
Make us comprehend the urgency of your crisis. Silence left to its own devices breeds silence. Speak and be heard. One word after the next. Express yourself.
Be loud. Make noise. Stand in poise and be open. Hope in these situations is not enough, and you will need someone to lean on. In the unlikely event that you have no one, look again.
Everyone is blessed with the ability to listen. The deaf will hear you with their eyes and the blind will see you with their hands. Let your heart fill their newsstands, let them read all about it.

Admit to the bad days and the impossible nights. Listen to the insights of those who have been there and have come back, they will tell you that you can stack it all, you can pack the despair, and you can even wear your sorrow but come tomorrow you have to change your clothes.

Everyone knows pain.

But we are not meant to carry it forever. We were never meant to hold it so closely, so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to you now will soon belong to them. Understand that when someone asks you “how was your day?”, realise that for some of us it is the only way we know how to say;
“Be calm.
Loosen your grip opening each palm slowly now.
Let go”