Life isn’t designed to make you happy.

Hear me out.

We all are going through our own unique struggles and experiencing different levels of pain. It could be a job loss, a miscarriage, a carryover, a lingering fear of failure, a heartbreak, a depression and something just in between and out of it.

So, we pray and hope for better days. The kind of days that will feel beautiful enough for you to notice the sun shine. The days where you are present enough to inhale the smell of nature. The days where you laugh loudly, and dance without rhythm. The days where your heart feels light and nothing weighs on you.

But here is the truth: Life is not designed to make you happy, or hand over these things to you on a platter of gold. Lol, life is pain, and to get out of pain, you have to experience pain.

So, you are suffering from depression. A situation caused by life events, but you are the one who has to sit through uncomfortable hours of therapy, paying exorbitant amount to smile. You are the one who has to see through the mental fog your head is always conjuring. You are the one who has to choose positivity even when life doesn’t give you a break. There’s yet a new event ready to break you.

You lost your job because your company couldn’t keep up with your pay. You’ve put in more than the required hours, but they have to let you go. So, you either stay without a job, watch your dreams fade away and wallow in hunger, or you send in mails after mails, days after days and get to the last stages of interview before your rejection letter comes in. It pierces your heart deeply, but you have to choose a pain. The rejections and the feeling of unworthiness, or you wallow in hunger.

You get it now: We have to choose our pain, and I am not here to motivate you on what to choose.

But you are a rock star first and foremost for taking in all the pain. You are a rockstar for even conceiving the thought to battle against life. You are a rockstar for choosing to take a step at a time managing the existing chaos. You are a rockstar for choosing your kind of pain.

I am rooting for you, for me, and for you and me. So when we meet on the other side of pain-which is pain again-we can give each other a warm hug, an embrace for going through life pains .

I love you for smiling, for dancing, for taking life’s jabs, for choosing how to go about your pain.

Your baby girl and and a fellow rockstar,

Aisha