An Open Letter: Draw A Line

Dear Friend,

I hope you check my blog now and then.  I know we have had our disagreements, and I have to tell you that I’m still kind of irritated by the root of them.  But I am not a spiteful person, I do my best not to harbour grudges, and I try to find the positive in each in every person I meet. 

Reading your emails and blog posts made me so sad.  You are holding on to so much negative in your life.  Resentment.  About people not understanding you, not seeing the challenges you face, not showing you compassion.  I get it – I really do.  I understand *exactly* what it means to live with an invisible illness that no one can see, that no one else but you can truly understand.  It completely sucks to have life as you once knew it change.

But that said – and I hope you don’t mind me saying this – you need to move forward.  I’ve found that when I look back at the past, the “what ifs”, it prevents me from moving forward and tackling the “what nexts”.  And I fear that you may be going down the rabbit hole of the past at the expense of a future that you can make as bright as you want – even with the added challenge of an invisible illness.

In the past week I was reading two different articles, but each expressed a sentiment that kind of relates to how we have to move forward and face our challenges with positivity.

The first was about Lance Armstrong.  Ah, I hear you saying: “How could Lance’s story offer me any solutions to my own issues?”

The article I refer to isn’t about Lance, or his attitude about living with cancer, or his past.  It was an op-ed in The Guardian about the Lance scandal.  And it made me pause.  It reminded me of you. In particular, this comment (which I have somewhat paraphased):

“Perhaps it’s time to move along.  Scrubbing obsessively at supposed stains of the past is doing nothing for that.”

We can’t keep re-living the things that have gone wrong, the injustices we face.  When we dwell on the negative – those stains of the past – we are not creating the positive future that we each deserve.

The second article I read was about another athlete.  In 220 Magazine I came across a piece by Vicky Holland.  I have been lucky enough to meet Vicky Holland, at the 2011 ITU World Championship Series Triathlon race at London’s Hyde Park.  She is an amazing athlete – determined, dedicated, and now a member of the Team GB Olympic team for triathlon – and she is a down to earth friendly person, a true role model in sport.  Her words in 220 not only struck a chord in me, but they also made me think of you.

“If you really can’t let it go, and you still wake in the middle of the night, haunted… use that feeling to motivate you, rather than bring you down.”

Please don’t quit.  Please don’t give up.  Please just draw a line under things.  And from that line, treat things like a fresh start.  Move forward with positivity and resolve. Use the experiences you’ve had recently to motivate you to be the best you that you can be.  And don’t let anyone else stand in the way of the positive that you are capable of creating.

Because living in the negative is just not a nice place to be.  I know – I’ve been there too…

Your friend,
Donna

3 responses to “An Open Letter: Draw A Line”

  1. Very well put.

    It’s important to acknowledge our past, the good and the bad, but we should learn from those experiences and move forward. It’s not always easy to feel positive, but it’s a heck of a lot more fun to than living with negativity, or a sense of loss and regret. 

    Life is short. Live happy.

  2. What you’ve written is so true. Time will always move forward and if we stay stuck in the past dwelling on things we can’t change, it makes for a pretty miserable existence.

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