Arrivee

What I want to say is phrased very eloquently in my head, but I realize I will not get them out so cleanly. So I apologize if I fumble at the words like a pimply faced teenager asking a girl out for the first time.

There are periods in our lives when we truly are in hell. The problem with being in hell is not what you go through as you are there. The problem is the person it turns you into while you are there and how it clouds your clarity such that you don't even know it that you've become someone you wouldn't recognize.

During these times, some of us are fortunate to have someone in your life that stays by your side regardless of how trying that becomes. Unfortunately, we don't realize that sometimes we don't treat these people as the angels that they truly are. We don't see how the pain we are going through changes our behaviors. The effect of our suffering runs so deep that we no longer have the capacity to express positive emotions and we end up poisoning our lives and the relationships with these angels with the pain we can't seem to shake.

These angels try to let us know we are hurting them, but pain is a selfish emotion. We know we are hurting them and we desperately don't want to, but the pain doesn't allow us to consider the severity of the consequences of our actions on others. We can react so negatively to positive things that its nauseating. We get so mad about stupid trivial things that outside of hell, we would be able to laugh off.

One day, the angel can no longer take it. We've coated their wings with the black oil of our negativity. Eventually, we leave hell. We go back to being the person we were and our friends and loved ones truly love and appreciate. However, sometimes this is too late for the angel and that angel finally leaves to cleanse their wings of your poison.

You can't blame them, really. You just wish, harder than you've ever wished before, that you would have had the clarity to see what you were doing and you would do anything- ANYTHING to go back. To see the hurt your pain was causing in others. To see how you reacted so stupidly to so many things. How the best things in your life, you drove away.

Unfortunately, as a cruel twist of life, we sometimes lack the ability to save the things we need the most until they are past the point of saving. We reach the Arrivee banner a little too late. Your fans have long since left. Underneath the Arrivee banner we can look back on the roads that got us there. We can see what we've done, what we should have done, and what we need to do.

The lesson is this- every night, force yourself to stand underneath an Arrivee banner so you can gain the clarity you need to keep your angel close. Even in Hell, the banners exist, though they are so, so hard to find. As you sit there at the end of the day looking back at the path you just traveled, think about how your every action impacts those around you. Think about the great things people are doing for you that you never notice. And notice that the things you think you dislike or irritate you are the first things you will miss with all your being when they are gone.