While thinking about all the issues confronting me this year, I liken them to a backpack full of bricks. Every issue -- deaths, job loss, illnesses, problems, financial woes et al -- is in a backpack that I've carried around daily.

Was it my choice to pick up the backpack? To throw the bricks in? To allow them to stay?

Those bricks eventually become /so/ heavy that you completely forget you're wearing the backpack and focus only on the pain. And pain, as we all know, is often crippling. Still, we carry on, trying to function normally, but in great pain. And we don't know how to let go.

It takes something SERIOUS to get our minds OFF the pain and focused ON to the backpack full of bricks. Yet once we do, that's when positive changes can finally occur.

One by one, you can rid yourself of the bricks that've been causing you so much pain. Let them go. Drop them out one, two, three at a time. I tell myself that this, more than anything, is what my life has been like this year. I started off New Year's, with a positive outlook, then shortly after, found my life hurling down a vortex of solitude, darkness, pain, remorse. Each month, something new happened to make life a little worse. I'd toss another brick into the once-new backpack, and I kept doing this until I finally accepted the backpack full of crippling bricks as "normal". This definitely required a wakeup call.

As a writer, I'm sort of different in that I do my best work when I'm untortured :) So with this bag came impotence. In most all things. Although I can do nothing about the physical pain, I /can/ accept it as part of my life, and something I have to gut out. The death of my parents hurt so badly, but I can feel secure they're in a better place, and watching over me. Toss out more bricks. And on and on it goes.

I still have some heavy bricks in my backpack, but I'm conscious of them. Daily, I work on tossing these bricks out, and for good, never traveling back down the path that led to these particular bricks in the first place. I take a different road, decidedly one less-traveled, and my bricks become a little smaller, my backpack, significantly lighter, and my life starting to come into focus again.

I can see. It took someone genuinely loving me and me, loving them back, to show me a better way of life. Having someone /truly/ on my side showed me those who're NOT. It showed me that I don't have to bear my backpack alone, because my bricks become his, too. And his bricks become mine. Together, we're helping one another rid the other of our bricks. Two heads are better than one. One head that loves ya is plenty to help you heal.

Today, my backpack feels light, extremely manageable, and I'm toting it happily. The bricks left inside aren't growing in number and are diminishing in size. Some bricks are just too big to pick up and throw out; some have to atrophy at their own speed or with your help. Leaving some situations alone can diminish that brick to nothing.

Some of my bricks need diminishing, while others, I can easily throw out.

Today, I threw out one brick. I threw out a pebble. Then, an anvil. But all -- when dropped -- offer an equal amount of relief.

Tomorrow, I'll throw out two more. I know my bricks by name, and almost became so accustomed to carrying them, that I accepted that heavy backpack as part of a natural life process. So untrue. But I indeed tricked myself into believing it was the gospel, and thus have carried these the last mile I intend on carrying them.

We choose.

We gather them. We start to love them, in a sick, twisted way because we OWN them.

We toss them in our backpacks, we give them a name, breathe life into them, help them grow even. And hopefully one day, this epiphany occurs because we were meant to learn some serious and valuable life lessons. Had we not carried the burden of our bricks, we wouldn't have learned. You'll never learn anything from someone who always agrees with you, and you certainly can't appreciate "good, mental health" without having suffered through some hard times.

This weekend, I'm working on my bricks, until they've dwindled down to nothing. I'll always keep the backpack; because holding these bricks in my hand would be certain death. But the backpack, even empty, will stay to remind me of what it took for me to get right where I am today.