I've got your back

When you're single, it's easy to feel alone. When I was married, I also felt alone, but I think that was a symbol of the marriage not working. As a single person, you do so much by yourself that the world can feel hollow and quiet and daunting. And then you reach out to a friend and you find out that someone "has your back", that you are not as alone as you thought, that all it took was for you to be brave enough to admit that you were scared and unsure and unsettled. All it took was for you to tell one person, or twenty, that you were having a hard time, that you needed some reassurance and that you were looking for support- and it was there. All it took was for you to admit you aren't always strong, aren't always together, aren't always ok, to find that your support was there, all the time, you just couldn't see it.

And the reality is that our support is always there; when we feel most alone is when we are actually most supported. When we don't need our friends and our family and their support, they fade in the background. When we need them, we just need to look with our eyes and our hearts and reconnect with the love and the concern and the shoulders that they will lend to us to carry some of the weight we bear. The truth is that our friends' and our family's love is always with us, that we are enveloped by it, but we don't feel it until we choose to. Asking for help is a gift- it allows others to be reminded that they are needed and it reminds us that we are not alone.

This is the life.
- a