Aidan Boyer.
Photography by Oviya Dass
If you’re reading this, you don’t need to make something beautiful out of your pain.
The idea that life should be treated as a creative work of art fits a little too well with the same systems that exhaust us. We’re told that we’re only valuable if we’re creating something. If we’re building a brand, or chasing success, or constantly reinventing ourselves into something better. Feeling depressed? Rewrite your story. Still struggling? Post about it. Still not happy? Try harder. After all, everyone is supposed to be the artist of their own life, right?
l've spent years trying to convince myself that I was doing everything right. That I was a happy, easy-going, politically conscious person living life the way I'm supposed to. Get the right relationship, the right internship, the right sense of purpose. It was exhausting to believe my value only came from achievement.
We romanticize everyday life while ignoring how hard it actually is. We fetishize words like “happy”, “competent”, and “sane” as if they’re requirements, not possibilities. But life isn’t something that is won at the end. It’s never fully “made right”, never ever, and that this is as it should be. That it is OK to be insanely broken, to have scars, to crack open, to fall apart, to not get up. That it’s fine to lie around shattered.
If you’re reading this, I hope you know that you don't need to make something beautiful out of your pain. Your life doesn't owe a story of triumph. Let it be what it is. Let yourself be what you are. The moment you give up on the idea of what life is supposed to be is the moment you see the life that's in front of you.
Aidan B., Virginia Tech
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